I'm far from a wine connoisseur, being mostly a beer and whiskey guy. The only wines I've sampled in the last few years are the raspberry and dandelion wines my wife makes right here on our Alaska homestead. I'm told her dandelion is much like a dry white, and the raspberry is a rich, fruity tipple.
France is known for wine, for its vast vineyards. However, French winegrowers and vineyard owners are facing challenges, specifically related to the slowly warming European climate, a climate that has been gradually warming, with a few spikes and dips, since the end of the last ice age.
Here's the thing: Much of the problem is overproduction. Some of that is due to a drop in consumption. However, part of it is that a slightly warmer climate is beneficial for wine grapes. Watts Up With That's Eric Worrall has some details.
It’s all President Trump’s fault of course.
Can you imagine some government official coming onto a US farmer’s land, and telling them they have to uproot some of their crops, to help the farmer next door avoid bankruptcy?
What really strikes me about this story is the problem is overproduction – yet we are continuously told the wine industry is suffering a climate crisis.
Clearly that climate crisis is creating too much wine, so much so the French government wants to kill lots of grape vines. Not exactly the narrative we have all been given by our lapdog mainstream media.
Now, to tell the whole story, part of the issue is on the demand side. Demand for wines in Europe has been falling off. It's not clear why, but it is, and that's affecting the market.
But production is also up, and that's got the French Agriculture Ministry pulling up vines to "rebalance" wine production.
Earlier this week, the French Agriculture Ministry confirmed it has allocated €130 million to finance a new, permanent vine-pulling plan to “rebalance supply” and “restore the viability” of struggling farms in the most vulnerable regions.
This process involves severing and lifting the vines and their roots from the soil, usually using specialised equipment like a deep plough, and can cost around €1,000 per hectare.
This isn't a new practice. Vine-pulling for a variety of reasons has been done since Roman times. It's not uncommon in these kinds of crops, where the fruit comes from a vine or other plant that carries over from year to year. On occasion, the vines are thinned, increasing the sunlight and trace minerals available to the remaining plants. In this case, though, it's being done to address over-production. On the other side of that cycle, in a move that's sure to upset wine aficionados, excess wines are being distilled into industrial alcohols.
Minister Annie Genevard has also asked the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Chrisophe Hansen, to finance the crisis distillation of non-marketable overstocks. This is where excess supply is turned into alcohol used for industrial purposes rather than consumption.
There are plenty of claims that Europe's wine production is having trouble with the climate. But an overproduction doesn't seem to be an issue one would normally associate with climate panic.
Read More: Udder Madness: Europe Is Now Poisoning Cows for a Methane Myth
Net-Zero Nightmare: Renewables Require 10x More Land Than Fossil Fuels
Here's the thing: Grape yields in France haven't changed much over the last 65 years. That takes us back to a time well before most of the climate-panic models begin. No, France's problem isn't due to climate. It's due to social changes. People in Europe aren't drinking as much wine, and France's growers' problems are compounded by wines from other countries.
A continued decline in wine consumption, particularly red wines, has also contributed to France’s vineyard crisis. Last year, global consumption of wine fell to its lowest level in more than 60 years, while multiple surveys have pointed to Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2021) turning their back on alcohol altogether.
Yes, wine grape production is affected by climate. In general, they do better in a mildly warming climate. In Britain, wine grapes were grown during the Roman occupation, from the 1st to the 4th century A.D., and again during the Medieval Warm Period, from 900 to 1400 A.D., both times when Britain's climate was rather warmer.
And, wine-making is seeing something of a revival in Britain in recent years, since about 1950, in fact. But France is asking for money from the EU to prop up its wine industry, all while the problem facing the French wine industry is overproduction, not a drop in production.
The left, the legacy media, and climate scolds (but I repeat myself) are fond of immediately running home to push the "OMG climate change" button whenever there is any change in any industry or activity. But they ignore when a case is much more complicated, like this case, where French wine growers aren't affected by climate change so much as by a changing market and increased competition from other sources. Add to that a rather dumb economic policy, including the required vine-pulling, and you have a real problem.
But it's a problem of economics and agricultural policy. Not the climate.
