This Europe: Sour grapes as Bergerac vineyards face crisis

A dispute has erupted between the giant wine producers of Bordeaux and the minnows of neighbouring Bergerac only weeks before the grapes are harvested.

Philippe Alain, from Bergerac, a member of the Confédération Paysanne, the campaign group led by the grassroots farming activist José Bové, said: "In Bergerac we are suffering the full force of the French wine emergency. The wholesale prices of our wines have fallen by 40 per cent compared with last year. We are looking at just €668 (£430) for a 900-litre barrel. That's one of the lowest prices in France and a greater drop on last year than any other region."

On Mr Alain's insistence, the group has called a crisis meeting in Monbazillac – a Dordogne town famous for its white wine – to rally the region's small-scale growers to the crisis. Dordogne's best-known wines are its red bergeracs.

Some of the growers want to withhold part of this year's output. Such a tactic – more in the traditions of the mighty oil producers of Opec than of small French vineyards – could bring about a price rise once there is a hint of a shortage of bergerac.

Mr Alain said the reason bulk buyers were paying less in Bergerac than in any other French region was neighbouring Bordeaux. Its export markets have been eroded by wines from the "New World" and has launched an aggressive campaign to dominate the domestic market.

He said: "The small wines used to do well in France. But now that Bordeaux – with all its marketing resources – wants to win back that market, we are losing out. Another reason for our trouble is speculation by the big wine buyers, who just want to play us off against each other.

"At the same time," said Mr Alain, who is one of 1,200 wine growers in Dordogne, "the prices in the shops are staying the same, sales of wine are increasing, and none of that profit margin is being passed on to us."

According to Michel Le Naour, the president of the 500-member Caves Co-opératives de Dordogne, many grape growers have agreed to sell this year's harvest at cut-price to make ends meet. "We are at the point where producers are in danger of going under – especially those who in the past few years have accumulated debts through buying equipment to increase the quality of their wines.

"We have to do something, or be helped by the government. If nothing is done, Dordogne will become like Charente where growers are paid to uproot their vines and go into retirement," Mr Le Naour said.

Some grape growers at the Monbazillac meeting are strongly opposed to withholding the sale of bergerac wine, Opec-style. Michel Royere-Blanchard, a wine producer, said: "I'm an independent, I sell 90 per cent of my wine directly to the public and to restaurants. I have very little to do with bulk buyers and that is how I get around the problem. People have to be imaginative these days."