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
THE RETURN OF ANIMALS TO THE VINEYARD
WINTER-SPRING 2024
ORGANIC GRASSES & THEIR OVINE MUNCHERS
The commendable efforts by growers to re-connect with the land and ancient practices started a few years ago with the return of horses to plough the vineyards. For many years, there has been a heroically named horse at the biodynamic and organic Le Mas de Libian in the Southern Ardèche, where Bambi has taken the mantle of Nestor, who died aged just 18 in 2018.
Hélène Thibon at Libian has always been forward acting in matters of the environment, with her 25 hectares of mainly Côtes du Rhône vineyards on clay-limestone gentle inclines allowing ease of work for Bambi. As an organic and biodynamic domaine, she has a committed following among les branchés, the informed drinkers and enthusiasts, and is much respected by other growers across France.
There has also been a tradition of some degree of horse cultivation at Hermitage in the Northern Rhône – an older, more historic vineyard with more means about it. This lapsed when I was a young man, but started to re-appear in that most technical of decades, the 1980s, which was a surprise: these were the years of spraying by helicopter and no holding back on chemical use for many.
The brothers Cotte were mixed farmers nearby in the Drôme [cows, goats, corn, apricots, asparagus] and kept two working horses that would sleep in a little stable in the vines, owned by Jean-Louis Grippat until he retired and sold it to Marcel Guigal.
One hectare would take 18 hours’ work, the brothers strapped behind them and staggering along at speed behind the mighty beasts, accompanied by grunting noises and throaty commands such as “yap” and “doucement”. Two trips per row were made, to turn the soil on each side of the vines. The season for the horses ran from March to September.
Growers using them on lower lying sites such as Les Murets, Beaume, and parts of Le Méal and Les Greffieux were Marc Sorrel, Jean-Louis Chave, Guigal and Bernard Faurie, with Chapoutier having their own two horses.
More recently, there has been the arrival of sheep to help to fertilise the vineyard, their season the opposite, being over the winter until around April, when the shoots start to appear. They do not require heavy hours of invigilation, with an outlay on fencing and occasional shifts [note the f] of venue. In the Northern Rhône, Rémy Nodin at Saint-Péray and Julien Barge at Côte-Rôtie have been shepherds for the past three years or so.
The Nodin domaine has been officially organic since the 2022 vintage, the sheep in situ since 2020. Rémy and Amandine use a flock of 40 female adults or brébis. “The benefits are to rid the vineyard of stubborn weeds such as ivy and couch grass [chiendent] and provide a natural manure, as well as giving a belle image for the domaine,” states Amandine.
She also notes that they have not been frosted on areas where the sheep have pastured, and reduced the height of the grasses from 15-20 cm in the spring. The Nodins estimate a gain in time in looking after the soils following the sowing of seeds between the rows. There will also be wool products coming along.
Another Northern Rhône grower, Jef Malsert of Domaine de l’Iserand high up at Saint-Joseph, has also used sheep: “I plant rye, beans, clover, for example, between the rows, then turn the soils late on. I have used sheep on half a hectare, with very good results, they are there from leaf fall until April or so, not later. I tried mules, but they use the same s**t hole all the time, meaning I have to distribute it, which is not part of the deal!”
Away from the slopes and ledges of the Northern Rhône, there is some serious sheep activity at the organic Domaine Les Ondines at Vacqueyras, whose Jérémy Onde also owns vineyards at Sablet, Plan de Dieu, Séguret, Travaillan and Beaumes-de-Venise – plenty of munching there.
Jeremy tells his story: “I started the sheep three years ago, and now have 147. I sell the males, and the sheep are in the vineyard only during the winter. I don’t need them to cut right back the grasses and weeds, what they leave is a more fine grass that also facilitates the tractor to go through the rows, plus their droppings of course. They are a work tool behind the tractor, and I can use them to take out grass on precise spots.
I bought a Bordier Collie recently to direct them, notably along the edges of vineyards. I admit that the project didn’t start well – it was like an American arriving in Vacqueyras, with the locals licking their lips: I was sold sheep at a high price, there were sheep with problems, and I was seen off. The cost for me amounts to the fencing and my time with them.”
I expect sheep to become a common sight during the winter months in future, their presence and sound of tinkling bells a re-assuring backdrop to the re-vitalization of the vineyards, and helping the land to cope better with summer extremes.
