Cooperative wineries still produce half of the French wine, but face the general crisis in the sector, some are struggling to play their role as a social shock absorbent, and the approaches are already arriving. “It is a slow descent to hell,” describes Joël Boueilh, president of the cooperative wines of France, who celebrated their 52nd Congress in Paris on Thursday with the “Cap on Transformion.”
Climate, decrease in consumption, threatening customs duties, clouds are accumulating for viticulture. The 550 cooperatives in the country, which gather almost 60% of French wines, are traditionally “a seal, a shock absorber” for their members, of which they buy, vinify, sell the grapes, Joël Bueilh emphasizes. For four years of climatic whims, “we produced little but we tried to maintain the income of the winemakers. In 2025, we will have a normal harvest, but now we ask ourselves: who will drink this wine?”
Already the year 2024 has seen failures, with “some social plans”, while cooperatives, which bring together 35,000 wine growers, also use 17,000 employees. To this must be added the uprooting campaign of 27,000 hectares of plants: “The tanks will remain empty, while the charges will be identical, it will be more difficult for those who remain,” says Joël Boueilh for whom “we reach the end of a system in many places.”
Budget restrictions
According to the union, one hundred cooperatives are in trouble and “they will have to consider seriously, mergers”, in any case a “group of charges”, and not only in the south and the rind wine producing regions.
In Alsacia, a tarroir of white and bubbles, cooperatives have another advantage, says Pierre-Olivier Baffey, president of the Bestheim winery: since the 1950s, they have been bottled and sold to customers. However, it points out a “small performance performance”, and for two years we had to provide an “additional income” to the 310 members. Then, Bestheim, already of the fusion of four entities in the 2000s, today discusses an approach with a neighboring winery. Objective: Develop teams for Crémant and also support commercial development, even in France, he explains.
In Luberon, Michel Isouard, from the Lourion winery, abounds: “We may have left the merchants too much,” said the administrator, whose winery sells a lot and has diversified his offer, white, organic and pink.
In their congress, cooperative wines received the Minister of Agriculture Annie Ginebard, who promised 10 million euros in restructuring assistance (displacement of sites, transport of materials, etc.), which are still waiting for unlocking. “The ministry does everything that may not have to unlock them by the end of the year, due to budgetary restrictions,” annoy Joël Boueilh. The Minister explained in May in the Finance Committee of the Assembly that had immediately entrusted to its services “a mission about the restructuring of cooperative wineries.”
“A great future”
For Vincent Creton, director of the Sancer Winery (76 winemakers), the “cooperative form has a great future, is an extremely modern vision of wine and the company, unlike what was transmitted in the 70s and 80s”. The basement born in 1963 embarked on a “modernization of tools and their image”: conquest of markets in the United States but also in Japan, repositioning in “affordable luxury” in France, recruitment of a master of wineries, novelty like pink without vintage.
“We break the codes, we offer other things, we want it to be good and also valued because behind, the goal is the correct remuneration of the cooperators,” says Vincent Creton. In two years, its turnover has increased from 11.4 million euros to more than 15 million.
Source: BFM TV
