WE ARE HERE TO MAKE WINE, NOT PAPER

SUMMER-AUTUMN 2024

CÔTES DU RHÔNE: THE CRISIS DEEPENS

The Fédération des Caves des Vignerons Co-opérateurs de Vaucluse (FCVCV) has dramatically shut the offices of 27 Co-operatives under its jurisdiction, in a direct complaint about the toll of administration and form filling demanded by a tin-eared French state. They have not placed an end date to this action, which means that no state or bureaucratic controls will be allowed to take place for the foreseeable future.

“We won’t duck out of our obligations,” states Vincent Raz, the director of the Terres d’Alliance Co-opérative in the Luberon, which has 120 members looking after 950 hectares, “but we won’t receive any controllers unless there is a simplification of things." He cites having to deal with more than 5,000 civil texts: “at a stage when we aren’t succeeding in selling our wine, and are in a true crisis, the only response is to make dossiers on it and to be controlled,” he adds.

The FCVCV document of complaints has been sent to all parties – the Prefecture of the Vaucluse, the Fraud Offices, Customs, France AgriMer – but report that there has been no response, not even an acknowledgment of receipt. Except for a statement about penal consequences if controls are blocked.

Further and more extensive action is now expected after the harvest 2024 has been brought in. Growers are already extremely fed up that promises for action made after the February 2024 demonstrations all over France have resulted in precisely nothing, a bureaucratic stodge, in other words.

The Federation is ready to go to court on this, and has cited the following in its four page document of complaint: “numerous Co-opérateurs are taking collective action to manage their debts without being able to receive remuneration. In this unheard of context, there is an imbalance between the derisory selling price and an exponential increase in the charges applied. This explosion is in large part linked to the piling on of constraints and legislative obligations amplified by zealous controls by administrators more inclined towards a punishing repression than towards prevention.”

For example, they cite three different tasks that basically amount to the same thing – notably a Monthly Recapitulation, an Annual Inventory form and the Declaration of Stock. Three tasks that could be made into just one.

They are also extremely angry about the tone of advertising against the consumption of alcohol by Public Health France. Alain Brusset, director of the FCVCV, is quoted as saying: “wine needs to be redrawn into daily life, and not that it serves to give you cancer from the very first glass you drink.”

He also states: “we are not against controls, but we are currently dying a death. To be able to maintain the administrative mass when the market for Côtes du Rhône is at €70 per hectolitre is not the same thing as intended. It’s a question of dignity; our Co-operatives should be considered by administration organisations as partners, not assassins. It’s traumatising to have the tone set in a Control of the Casier Viticole.

We would like some pedagogy/education and support, not to be hauled up on trifles at a time when wine entities are doing very badly, don’t know to whom they can sell their wine, are no longer farmers and have staring at them the perspective of ripping out vines or letting land become overgrown. The lads are being strangled.”

The situation has built up as the market for Côtes du Rhône red, the lifeblood of these collective organisations, has fallen out of bed, as I have written already. I quote the figures I used in my piece earlier this year: “the percentage by volume of all bulk sales’ transactions of Côtes du Rhône red in the range €70-110 per hl was 32% in January 2024, 29% in February and 59% in March, then 66% in April for a wider and worse range of €60-110 per hl. The trend downwards is disturbing, make no mistake.

We are seeing prices per litre of 60 to 70 centimes. Imagine the effect on a grower’s morale of receiving these measly centimes – the unwanted coins in one’s pocket – for his or her wine – what a bleak landscape, literally.”

Reactions to this news of the lockout of controllers include comments such as:

“Bravo; we are no longer the owners of our lands, but simply workmen who are the puppets of these organisms.”

A grower in Bordeaux: “today the ship is sinking but when help arrives their first demand is if our papers are in order. People don’t realise that we fulfil more and more the role of the State.”

“The customs people speak to us as if we were naughty kids. France AgriMer’s incorruptible people fail the dossier you submit under the least pretext. Then there is the red tape that never ends. I hope this movement will broaden.”

“The fracture has still not reduced, even after the start of the year demonstrations. The urgency of the situation is real.”

The 27 Co-operatives are drawn from the following pool:

Ansouis: Les Vignerons d’Ansouis

Apt: Sylla

Beaumes-de-Venise: Rhonéa

Beaumont du Ventoux : Cave Co-opérative

Bedoin: Vignerons du Mont Ventoux

Bonnieux: Cave de Bonnieux

Cabrières d’Aigues: Cave Le Temps des Sages

Cairanne: Cave de Cairanne

Caromb: Cave Saint Marc

Châteauneuf-du-Pape: La Grenade

Courthézon: Cellier des Princes

Cucuron: Terres d’Alliance

Gigondas: La Cave

Goult: Cave de Lumières

Grambois : Les Coteaux de Grambois

Maubec: Cave du Luberon

Mazan: Cave Canteperdrix

Morières-les-Avignon: Demazet

Pertuis: Cave des Bons Sachants

Puyméras: Cave La Comtadine

Rasteau: Ortas

Richerenches: Le Cellier des Templiers

Sablet: Le Gravillas

Saint Didier: Cave la Courtoise

Sainte Cécile-les-Vignes: Cave Cécilia

Sainte Cécile-les-Vignes: Colombes des Vignes

Séguret: Les Vignerons de Roaix-Séguret

Sérignan: Les Coteaux du Rhône

Tour d’Aigues: Terres Valdèze

Vacqueyras: Rhonéa

Vaison-la-Romaine: La Romaine

Valréas: Cave La Gaillarde

Villedieu: La Vigneronne

Villes sur Auzon: TerraVentoux

Visan: Cave Les Coteaux

Sources Vitisphere.com, Inter-Rhone