According to figures released by the French Ministry of Agriculture this week, the estimate for this year’s wine harvest has been revised downward again. As of October 1, the expected yield is now 37.5m hl , which would be 22% below last year's total and 15% below the average from 2019–2023. Previous estimates from September had forecast 39.3m hl. This means the 2023 harvest may even dip just below the "disastrous year" of 2021 (37.6m hl) and approach the all-time low of 2017, when only 36.78m hl were produced. The latest data was collected by Agreste, the statistics agency under the French Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with regional offices of FranceAgriMer.
Broken down by wine categories, AOP wines show a 20% drop compared to last year and a 17% decrease compared to the five-year average. For IGP wines, the decline is 14% and 11%, respectively. The "other wines" category, which includes wines without any geographical indication, saw an even more significant drop, down 32% from last year and 14% compared to the 2019–2023 average. No region was spared from the downturn, with Jura suffering the most, experiencing a 75% decline. Burgundy and Beaujolais were also hard-hit, with a 35% decrease compared to last year, while Champagne saw a 33% drop. Other regions include Charente (-30%), the Loire Valley (-30%), Provence and the Rhône Valley (-16%), Bordeaux (-14%), Languedoc-Roussillon, Alsace, and Corsica (-13%), and Savoy (-5%), the only region not to show a decline compared to the five-year average. The Southwest region reported a 3% decrease.
Unlike in the past, despite the smaller harvest, no automatic price increase is expected—a result of weak consumption and competitive pressure from abroad. While some merchants from Bordeaux, as seen on the industry platform "Vitisphere," are still hoping for price increases, the news from the South of France is much less optimistic. As a result, the gap between costs and revenue for affected winegrowers is expected to widen further. It’s already clear that this year’s harvest will worsen the ongoing crisis in the French wine industry. One reader comment on "Vitisphere" sums it up: "Yield at the level of 2021, production costs up 20 to 30% since then, but consumption down 30% since 2018... so when you get to this point, anything is possible." SP
