Back to school meeting, the Wine Fairs have started all over France.

The opportunity for the French to redo their cellars and for the winegrowers to sell their stocks.

Hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, they are betting a lot on this commercial operation. 

This is one of the back-to-school meetings.

The Wine Fairs have just started, first on the Internet, and in several supermarket chains from tomorrow (Carrefour, Intermarché).

During confinement, the frequency of French wine consumption increased: 44% say they drink more than before, citing pleasure as the main argument, according to a survey by the European Association of Wine Economists (EuAWE) and the Wines Chair and Spirits from INSEEC U. These Wine Fairs will be an opportunity for many of us to redo our cellars.

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An important meeting

Among the winegrowers, stocks have accumulated at the same rate as the cellars of the French have emptied.

And with consumption down by nearly 5% and especially export sales down by 16%, these annual meetings are even more important than usual for winegrowers.

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"As we could see during the Covid, the French emptied their cellars. They had more time, it was a different time," said Gérard Bertrand, owner of 15 châteaux in Languedoc Roussillon.

"The Wine Fairs are always a marker of the period of the month of September / October for French wines."

Focus on specific brands 

In supermarkets, the wines sold in September are chosen from January or February.

There will therefore not be so many good deals.

To find treasures, it is better to bet on specialized shops.

"We can quite find lots that were planned for example for restaurants, then finally these declined", confides Thierry Desseauve, co-founder of Bettane & Desseauve.

"It can work on high quality wines, great Bordeaux sometimes Burgundy cuvées. These wines, we will be able to find them in specific brands."

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