Fallout from last week's French winegrower's direction action blockade of a highway (which resulted in the destruction of thousands of bottles of Cava and one ISO tanker of Spanish red wine) continued to dominate the wine-related headlines this week (see last week's news roundup).
French Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau roundly condemned the actions of the winegowers, pointing out that, in wider agricultural terms, Spain has been more than helpful to its neighbor lately, accepting French cows despite the Europe-wide ravages of EHD (Epizootic hemorrhagic disease, dubbed "the cow Covid" on the continent).
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For its part, local agricultural union MODEF warned of a "social catastrophe" in southern French viticulture this week. The union highlighted an "accumulation of negative factors".
"[A] fall in yields in the south [of France], costs which have exploded by 40 percent, a surge in the price of dry goods, declining red wine consumption, inflation impacting the purchasing power of consumers and slowing down wine sales," quoted wine news website Mon-Viti. "Not to mention drought which has ravaged the Hérault, Aude, and Pyrénées-Orientales [departments]."
French wine news website Vitisphere, which also covered the Medef's press conference, said the group was asking for a minimum pricing strategy to be enacted.
In lighter news, we missed a major headline last week when it emerged that charcuterie Bobosse, in Beaujolais, had taken the world record for the longest andouillette sausage ever produced. Coming in at an impressive 16.8 meters ("the length of 110 standard andouillettes," regional newspaper Le Progrès pointed out), the giant sausage was made in a single natural casing.
The record-breaking andouillette took months to prepare and two days to put together. It was consumed last weekend at the Caveau des Compagnons du Beaujolais.
With apologies to our vegan and vegetarian readership, here are some of the other (wine) news headlines you might have missed this week:
Haut-Médoc in "a corridor of poverty"
Despite boasting a number of top Bordeaux estates, including three First Growths, the commune of Pauillac, in the Haut-Médoc, is one of the poorest in the entire region, said a French television documentary this week. The programme, entitled "Grands Crus, Grand Misère" (Great Vineyards, Great Misery") was aired on Friday on France 2 as part of their Envoyé Spécial documentary series.
The thrust of the piece was relatively straightforward. As the FranceInfo news website pointed out, in 2021, the turnover of the Médoc's vineyards represented a reported €1.3 billion. Meanwhile it is clear that wealth is not spreading to the locals.
Indeed, the documentary visited the Pauillac foodbank ("the one busy establishment in the town") and found, as well as a nominally retired couple struggling to pay the bills, workers from First Growth château Lafite-Rothschild.
"Doesn't it seem strange to you to be giving food to people working at Rothschild?" asks the journalist of one of the women working at the foodbank.
"Given my little smile, yes," replies the woman.
While some of the region's downturn in fortunes can be ascribed to the closure of the Shell refinery in Pauillac, this was in 1986 – more than a generation ago. Indeed, the closure means that viticulture and associated wine-related activitities remain the only major source of "often precarious" employment.
According to the documentary, which aired on French television channel France 2, on Friday, "viticulture has, paradoxically, contributed to the impoverishment of the area". It says economists have identified a "corridor of poverty" which appears to run from the top of the Médoc and the top half of the Haut-Médoc (including Saint-Julien, Pauilac and Saint-Estèphe and even as far south as Margaux), across the Gironde estuary to Blaye and round to Libourne and Saint-Emilion town where it turns south, across the Dordogne and into Entre-deux-Mers.
Judging by the responses on the FranceInfo website, not everyone believes the wine industry, or even the luxury goods firms, are entirely at fault. As several respondents noted, Pauillac town has a very different reputation (among connoisseurs) to Pauillac on a wine label.
While some clamored for the local estates to have more social responsibility, others were more dismissive. "It seems a little too easy and inflammatory to me to blame everything on the châteaux," said one.
French wine giant held to ransom
Vinovalie, one of France largest cooperatives, is being held to ransom by hackers after its computer system was hacked on the night of 25-26 October 25-26, paralyzing operations. According to local newspaper La Dépêche, the company's phones, computers, emails and internet are no longer functioning, with the hackers demanding €450,000 in ransom to be paid within seven days (by Thursday, November 2) in order for the system to be restored.
The company, which is based in Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe in the Tarn department of South West France, has an annual turnover of almost €22 million and sells wines from across Gaillac, Fronton and Cahors, is unable to take, pack or despatch orders,
“The factory is closed, around a hundred people are at home," the group's general director, Jacques Tranier, told the newspaper. "The only thing we can salvage is mail order sales."
"Our teams are working to find out if our databases have also been affected," he added. "We still don't know to what extent the hackers have blocked the network. We are also trying to find out how they managed to get into our system, but we have not yet found out."
Médoc winemaker dies
Philippe Raoux, who for decades owned and ran the Margaux estate Château d'Arsac, died last week at the age of 70. Raoux was a major figure in the region, not only for his stewardship and renovation of d'Arsac (it is currently a Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel), but for his La Winery du Médoc (known simply as "La Winery") visitor project, established in 2007.
La Winery, dubbed "the UFO of the Médoc" due to its size and striking architecture, boasted a cellar of a million bottles from around the world as well as a restaurant, conference center and mail-order wine business, was sold to La Passion des Terroirs (the Lurton family's négoce operation) in 2014.
According to La Revue du Vin de France, Raoux sunk more than €20 million into the enterprise. As well as being the owner of Château d'Arsac, Raoux also headed a major négoce enterprise, whose major outlet was via mail-order wine sales. Indeed, according to the French wine magazine, the Raoux empire is reputed to have become "Bordeaux's number one mail order wine sales business".
Raoux, however, was primarily known for his ownership of Château d'Arsac – the estate he modernized since taking over in 1986. Prior to this, Raoux and his family had been major winegrowers in Algeria before selling their winegrowing business and buying d'Arsac with the funds of the sale.
He also owned Château de Viaud, in Lalande-de-Pomerol, until its sale in 2011 to the Chinese state-owned Cofco conglomerate.
Woman steals wine from church
A woman has been caught on camera making off with two carafes of sacramental wine from the altar of a church in Tezonapa, in the Veracruz region of eastern Mexico. Carrying a bag over her shoulder, the woman is seen to approach the altar and, finding no member of the clergy nearby, disappears behind the table and is seen putting the carafes (or, more properly, cruets) in the bag before making off with her prize "without any fear of God", said one news outlet.
The video has been circulating widely on Hispanic socia media with most news reports leaning heavily on comments from the general public, one of which asked whether she was planning to use the wine in a witchcraft ceremony. Other theories abound including the more mundane "she was thirsty" to the possibility that the "cruets were made of glass cut with gold".
Another has simply pleaded with the unknown woman to "return the priests' cruets". It is not known whether the cruets (or the wines) have been returned. There are no reports of an arrest.
Galician town named Spanish city of wine
The coastal town of Cambados, in the heart of the Rias Baixas wine region of Galicia, has been named Spain's inaugural "City of Wine 2023". The title, created by the ACEVIN (the Spanish Association of Wine Cities) organisation this year, was given to the port town for its strong "promotion of wine culture" and wine tourism initiatives which, according to the Infobae website, "range from sustainable rural viticulture to the cultural legacy of wine".
ACEVIN had been taking nominations for the newly created title (inspired by the organization's participation in the European City of Wine nomination, which went to the Douro region in Portugal, earlier this year) for most of 2023. Cambados' winning bid was announced last week.
The town (where this writer stayed during a winemaking stint in Galicia back in 2010) is known for its impressive fleet of privately-owned SUVs and luxury vehicles, reminiscent of the well-heeled of Burgundy, and occasionally spotted in parking areas around the port. While the region cannot boast Burgundy's wine prices, it is notorious as a conduit in the international drugs trade.
Spanish broadsheet El Pais pointed out in 2019 that the national "Repsol travel guide features a route from Noia to Cambados to see 'the settings used by the Galician drug smugglers'". It also quoted the head of the regional national police unit as saying that "O Salnés [the district] is the epicenter of cocaine".
It is not yet known whether Cambados' new-found wine title will go some way to help rehabilitate the area's reputation.
