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The Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris fair welcomed wine professionals, happy to find their way back to the capital following the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic. Combining pleasure with work, producers and buyers have competed in innovation to regain market share.
Relaunching the machine following two difficult years was the dearest wish of the French wine industry. And a hell of a bet that the producers have successfully taken up.
« We were very worried regarding what was going to happen. observes Pauline Lozano. For the general manager of Maison Adrien Vacher, one of the leaders on the Savoie wine market, the show is a commercial success. “ We had exports, when we weren’t expecting it! “, notes this trader present mainly on the French market.
Satisfying his buyers from the Benelux countries, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Russia, but also Belarus and Ukraine, and who visibly appreciate Savoyard wines, will be quite a challenge for his company. French wine merchants were also present, as were wholesalers. All very interested in these fresh, low-alcohol white wines which are becoming new stars on the shelves. ” Savoy is present », rejoices Pauline Lozano. The winemaker is of course thinking of this Savoyard vineyard, whose name is displayed high up in large capital letters.
Wines must travel
The big business is in export, agree to say the winegrowers and winegrowers present at the show. However, battered by the pandemic and the US taxes, French products were a hit abroad in 2021. It is precisely thanks to them that the trade balance of France, strongly in deficit, limits the breakage. Sales of wines and spirits jumped by more than 28%, smashing the previous record, that of before the health crisis. César Giron, president of the Federation of Wine and Spirits Exporters of France (FEVS) did not hide his pleasure in announcing the rising figures: ” If the markets work so well, it is because consumers, who were confined due to health restrictions, then had a strong desire to find themselves. And so, when the economic recovery was there, the sector was also there. »
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Despite Brexit, the United Kingdom remains the second largest importer of French wines and spirits, following the United States, the largest market, and ahead of China, the third export market. These buoyant markets, Aymeric Izard courts them. Oenologist and director of Vignobles d’Exéa, a family estate located in the South of France, he remarks with pride: “ Thanks to our eco-responsible approach, we are present in Northern Europe and North America, that is to say in Canada and the United States, but also in Asian countries such as Singapore or Hong Kong. This Languedoc estate has been experiencing a real renaissance since 2018. Anne Besse, owner of the vineyard, offers her handmade wines for tasting. She understands the appetite of foreign consumers for French wines and intends to take advantage of it.
For her, as for other exhibitors, the challenge is clearly international. However, between inflation and geopolitical tensions, the clouds are gathering for the sector. According to Antoine Leccia, president of AdVini, a group present in France and South Africa, “ rises in raw materials have never been so strong. Increases on bottles of more than 10%, on boxes, they go up to 30%. These increases coincide with supply problems. The cost of freight has been multiplied by 5, even 6… When we manage to find containers! »
Responsible viticulture for the climate
Faced with these half-tone prospects, darkened even more by a very low harvest in 2021, the sector remains more mobilized than ever. The stakes are competitive, but also climatic. Isabelle Coustal sees this every year. Owner with her husband of Château Sainte-Eulalie in Languedoc, the winegrower observes the intensification and multiplication of weather hazards in the vines. “ Droughts are our biggest problem. In the past, we had autumn and winter periods with abundant rains which made it possible to increase the water supply of the soil. These rains provided us with water for the summer. This is no longer the case. From now on, we suffer from a lack of water, but on the other hand, periods of torrential rains come to us. In two days, it falls the equivalent of four months of rain. An infallible sign, according to her, of climate change.
Faced with these difficulties, winegrowers have allies. Thirty start-ups gathered in the space entitled “Wine Tech” were present at the show. Experts in digitization, often difficult but essential today, these companies support winegrowers through innovative solutions, for example lamps once morest frost, or imaging drones to detect frost and mildew, l one of the diseases of the vine.
« The management of climatic risks is taking more and more place in the strategy of a vineyard “, abounds Jean-Christophe Roubin, director of Agriculture and Agrifood at the Crédit Agricole bank. “ There is a panoply of solutions to answer the questions of climate change. For example, we can act on savings. Set aside and tax-exempt, it will be used to deal with these hazards. The reform of climate insurance, which should be voted on in the National Assembly, also goes in this direction. »
Innovative, festive and studious, the show has finally broken all records. 2,864 exhibitors from 32 countries, more than 20,000 visitors, boast the organizers, and they are right. The wine planet is well and truly back in Paris. For this first post-pandemic trade show and which aims to be a reference in the field.
