Will French cars soon be running on red wine? The question isn't as far-fetched as it might first appear. The idea of converting wine into bioethanol is currently under study. Although no one knows whether it will succeed, it does illustrate a way forward for the French wine industry, which is faced with a crisis of overproduction and is seeking to eliminate its surpluses.

"Structurally, we have between 4 million and 5 million hectoliters in excess, distributed mainly in the biggest red wine-producing areas, from Bordeaux [southwest] to Languedoc [coastal south], via the Rhône Valley [south]," said Jérôme Despey, a winegrower in Saint-Géniès-des-Mourgues, in the southern Hérault region, and first vice-president of the French National Federation of Agricultural Holders' Unions.

To explain this overflowing of vats, some people point to the decline in wine consumption in France. This is not a new phenomenon. The decline began at the turn of the 1970s. Since then, the volume of fermented grape juice consumed by the French has almost halved, falling from 46 million to 24 million hectoliters by 2023, according to data from the National Interprofessional Committee for Wines with Designation of Origin and Geographical Indication (CNIV).

The rate of decline even accelerated after 2010, with an average drop of 1.8% per year. It is even faster on supermarket shelves, where the decline reaches 3% per year. In the retail sector, where one in every two bottles is sold, red wines are particularly hard hit by this decline in consumption. Their sales fell from 5.1 million to 3.5 million hectoliters between 2017 and 2023, while those of rosés declined a little, to 3 million hectoliters, and those of whites held steady at 1.8 million.

It's true that French eating habits have changed radically. The country that prides itself on its gastronomy is also the one with the widest range of fast-food chains. Bistros with their traditional steak-frites-salad and small bottles of red wine are giving way to pizzerias, burger chains, kebab shops and fried chicken joints. The French are eating more and more unstructured meals, and the traditional family meal, often synonymous with opening a bottle of wine, is becoming rarer.

"Covid created a rupture. The watchword was relocation. Three or four years later, everyone had forgotten. We didn't see what we were getting ourselves into. Wine is presented as the symbol of French gastronomy, but you have to take the time to sit down. But there's a lot of hype out there, you've got to move fast, grab your sandwich and your drink," said Joël Boueilh, president of the French Winegrowers Cooperative.

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