Vive La France - More Slides on Organic Vines in France

Florent Guhl, Director, Agence Bio

Perhaps it is because we have such little published data on organic vines in the U.S. that I love these slides from the Millesime Bio conference, where organic wines are taken seriously as a growing part of the industry.

While I published a few slides from the Agence Bio conference presentation, today's slides come from a study put together by Agrex Consulting for SudVinBio, the group that puts on the conference.

WHERE THE FRENCH VINES ARE

The chart below shows you the percentage of certified organic vines by region. You'll see that PACA (Provence-Alps-Cotes-D'Azurs) has the highest percentage - 17.8% - but is actually not the largest when it comes to acreage.

PACA has 40,000 acres of organic vines, but the leader in acreage is Occitaine (includes Languedoc-Roussillon) with more than 62,000 acres of certified vines and another 10,700 acres in transition to certification. About 35% of all organic vines in France are in Occitaine.

Also you can compare this chart to the one from Agence Bio (see previous post) which breaks down the regions on more granular levels. Bordeaux looks to be less than 2% organic in the Agence Bio map. Nouvelle Aquitaine includes the Dordogne and other regions, which accounts for the 5.1% statistic. (Read Caro Feely's latest book for a first hand look on that story from an organic producer on the ground there).

Overall Spain and Italy outpace French organic vineyard acreage, but France's 9% (and growing) statistic far outpaces California, which is "underperforming" at 2.4%.

WINE SALES - EXPORT MARKET IS ALMOST HALF

This second slide is a telling one. Almost half of the French organic wines are exported. Overall the organic wine sector is worth 975 million Euros which amounts to $1.2 billion in U.S. dollars. Nothing to sneeze at.

Organic wines are exported more than other French wines with 47% (in 2016) going abroad. In comparison, only 32% of all French wines are exported.

The economic value of organic wines has more than tripled from 2010 to 2016 which shows that this is a fast growing market.



Read the rest of this presentation and others like it at the conference web site. (Most of the slides are in French; but there is one presentation in English from a Dutch wine writer. You can also use Google Translate for the French presentations.)