The wine industry, worried, warns of the drop in French exports

Tiphaine Dubuard / Photo credit: JOEL SAGET / AFP 3:10 p.m., February 13, 2024

After the mobilization of farmers, the French wine industry is sticking together. This week, at Porte de Versailles, 4,000 professionals gathered at the Vinexpo show in a tense context. In 60 years, wine consumption has fallen by 70% on average per capita. Beyond the difficulties that the sector is experiencing on our territory, exports are also slipping. After a record 2022, exports fell last year, with less than 10% in volume.

Sales of spirits down sharply

Inflation and rising production costs have also affected sales. But this is not enough to explain the unhappiness of the sector. For Gabriel Picard, president of the Federation of Wine and Spirits Exports in France, there is also a stock with France's largest customer: the United States. "What happened was a form of adjustment between the shipments we made from France to the United States and the stocks available in the United States which were shipments made in 2022", he explains at the microphone of Europe 1.

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The drop in exports also concerns China, Japan and even Canada. As a reminder, one bottle in three produced in France is sold abroad. But the first victim of this downward trend remains spirits: less 21% for cognac and vodka, for example. For Gabriel Picard, we must not let the sector down.

“The wine and spirits sector is the second contributor to the French trade balance; third in 2023 and the first agri-food surplus. It is the pride of our producers, our marketers and all our territories. It is a beautiful brand image and we must strengthen it and we need the support of everyone, including the public authorities,” he recalls. And it is in this sense that the executive announced a support plan for viticulture, in particular for Bordeaux winegrowers affected by mildew.