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BORDEAUX

Chinese lose their taste for Bordeaux fine wines

Are the Chinese losing their taste for Bordeaux wines? Exports for bottles of Bordeaux to China slid by six percent last year, meaning a worrying drop in sales figures of 1.4 percent overall.

Published: 14 March 2014 08:20 CET
Chinese lose their taste for Bordeaux fine wines
Asian buyers at a Bordeaux wine fair in France. Photo: Nicolas Tucat/AFP

Sales of Bordeaux wines slid by 1.4 percent last year, with exports dropping by 6 percent as Chinese drinkers cut their purchases by nearly a fifth, winemakers said on Thursday.

While the volume of wine from the southwestern French region sold edged up 0.3 percent to 557 million litres, or 742 million bottles, by value it slipped 1.4 percent to €4.24 billion ($5.9 billion), the CIVB association of Bordeaux winemakers said.

Exports fell 2 percent by volume to 213 million litres, and by 6 percent in value to €2.14 billion.

CIVB president Bernard Farges blamed the slump in exports on "the slowdown in China which has had exponential growth since 2005".

Sales in China fell 16 percent by volume and 18 percent by value, a drop of about €60 million. China and Hong Kong together account a quarter of Bordeaux's exports.

A crackdown on corruption by China's new leadership has hit sales of Western luxury goods as lavish gifts were often used to curry favour with officials.

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FARMING

Cold snap ‘could slash French wine harvest by 30 percent’

A rare cold snap that froze vineyards across much of France this month could see harvest yields drop by around a third this year, France's national agriculture observatory said on Thursday.

Published: 22 April 2021 15:09 CEST
Cold snap 'could slash French wine harvest by 30 percent'
A winemaker checks whether there is life in the buds of his vineyard in Le Landreau, near Nantes in western France, on April 12th, following several nights of frost. Photo: Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP

Winemakers were forced to light fires and candles among their vines as nighttime temperatures plunged after weeks of unseasonably warm weather that had spurred early budding.

Scores of vulnerable fruit and vegetable orchards were also hit in what Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie called “probably the greatest agricultural catastrophe of the beginning of the 21st century.”

IN PICTURES: French vineyards ablaze in bid to ward off frosts

The government has promised more than €1 billion in aid for destroyed grapes and other crops.

Based on reported losses so far, the damage could result in up to 15 million fewer hectolitres of wine, a drop of 28 to 30 percent from the average yields over the past five years, the FranceAgriMer agency said.

That would represent €1.5 to €2 billion of lost revenue for the sector, Ygor Gibelind, head of the agency’s wine division, said by videoconference.

It would also roughly coincide with the tally from France’s FNSEA agriculture union.

Prime Minister Jean Castex vowed during a visit to damaged fields in southern France last Saturday that the emergency aid would be made available in the coming days to help farmers cope with the “exceptional situation.”

READ ALSO: ‘We’ve lost at least 70,000 bottles’ – French winemakers count the cost of late frosts

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