France to pay €120 million to uproot 30,000 hectares of vineyards

The French government has submitted a €120 million plan to uproot 30,000 hectares of the country’s vineyards in response to a shrinking wine sector.

The plan, created by the state, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and the Bordeaux Wine Interprofessional Counsel, will uproot 30,000 of the nation’s 800,000 hectares of vineyards.

It’s part of a wider plan by the Ministry of Agriculture to uproot as much as 100,000 hectares. The Gironde department has already begun to reduce its vineyards by 8,000 hectares.

Vineyard owners have been offered as much as €4,000 per hectare they allow the government to uproot. Those who accept the offers aren’t allowed replant vines on the same land until at least 2029.

Wine consumption in France has been in freefall for multiple decades, dropping by 70% in the last 60 years. The average French citizen drank 120 litres of wine a year in the 1960s. It’s now just 40 litres, says the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT).

The trend is increasing in severity, government institution FranceAgriMer says, with red wine sales dropping by 15% in just the past three years.

Young French people are rejecting wine as their go-to drink. Changing drinking habits such as preferring beer to wine, and a wider rejection of drinking alcohol entirely by under 34s has fuelled this change in the market.

France’s wine industry is also being impacted by a reduced international demand for the drink. 2023 wine export figures were down 10% on the previous year. France was the largest wine exporter in the world in 2023 delivering 48 million hectoliters, although Italy is likely to regain that title this year.

China, once one of the biggest markets for French export wine, has reduced its demand in light of its