The Washington Post (WaPo) ran a story bemoaning the fact that France has produced more wine than wine drinkers are demanding, resulting in French wine producers destroying large volumes of wine.
This is a dramatic reversal from just two years ago when the mainstream media and French vintners were claiming climate change had made large regions of France inhospitable to wine production. [emphasis, links added]
This reversal shows as Climate Realism pointed out at the time, that France’s low wine production in 2021 was a result of temporary weather events, events similar to ones that wine producers in France and elsewhere had experienced many times previously and were not indicative of a long-term trend resulting from climate change.
In the WaPo story, titled “France has too much wine. It’s paying millions to destroy the leftovers,” Caroline Anders, a researcher for The Daily 202, writes:
France is about to destroy enough wine to fill more than 100 Olympic-size swimming pools. And it’s going to cost the nation about $216 million.
Ruining so much wine may sound ludicrous, but there’s a straightforward economic reason this is happening: Making wine is getting more expensive due in part to recent world events, and people are drinking less of it.
That has left some producers with a surplus that they cannot price high enough to make a profit. Now, some of France’s most famous wine-producing regions, like Bordeaux, are struggling.
Continuing, Anders notes that previously, the European Union (EU) had already provided France, the second most prosperous country in the EU as measured by GDP, with $172 million to destroy nearly 80 million gallons of wine.
France garnered even more EU funding to destroy yet more wine just last week.
As discussed in Climate Realism here and here, for example, just two years ago, French grape and wine producers were decrying lost production, blaming climate change for weather events from which many expressed concerns that they would never recover since a continued worsening was locked in.
At the time, Climate Realism wrote:
2021 was a particularly bad year for wine production in France. But, long-term data show 2021 was an anomaly, not indicative of a long-term trend that might implicate a changing climate.
Although weather conditions in Europe were unfavorable to wine production in 2021, other countries were producing more wine than in the previous year. A Forbes magazine article on France’s wine woes in 2021 stated:
The almost catastrophic figures from France were caused by very unfavorable climatic [sic] conditions during most of the growing season: frost, hail, storms, and humidity in the summer (causing diseases).
Grape and wine production has grown spectacularly during the recent decades, as modest warming has expanded the number and location of areas favorable for grape and wine production.
The most recent record for both grape and wine production was set as recently as 2018, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, well into the period of modest warming.
It is this global increase in production and declining consumption that has resulted in the present wine glut that French growers are facing.
Increased competition from foreign producers and declining sales, not climate change, is responsible for French wine producers’ woes.
Wine can be stored for years, even decades, with the best wines improving with age. Despite this, French producers, with subsidies from the EU, are destroying millions of gallons of wine that could be sold at a later date if demand for wine rebounds.
The decision to destroy their wine is driven by concerns about cost and profits, not climate change. Sadly, the WaPo and Anders ignore the elephant in the room.
Although Anders notes “wine is getting more expensive due in part to recent world events,” she fails to acknowledge the fact that prominent among the factors contributing to wine becoming more expensive are the Western world’s climate policies that have increased energy costs and the cost of fertilizers and pesticides.
Nor does WaPo or Anders mention that climate change has improved grape and wine production globally, benefiting average wine imbibers, if not dedicated oenophiles.
Read more at Climate Realism
Clearly a sign of the human caused climate apocalypse! Production drops and our burning fossil fuels caused it. Production increases and it’s caused by the same thing. The climate pushers live by the motto: “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
My wife and I are doing our bit to help France (and other wine-producing countries) by drinking a bottle with dinner most evenings. Just trying to do our bit!
It was just a few years ago that surplus European wine was distilled into fuel ethanol. I guess that didn’t go too well because they’re not doing it now. The massive over – production of agricultural commodities proves that there is no existential climate threat to humanity. 5 billion bushels of corn run through American ethanol plants every year. We wouldn’t be doing that if we were hungry.
The world is full of natural cycles such as the pendulum. There are wet years followed by dry years. Wild animal populations explode and then crash. In the 1970’s there was a shortage of electrical engineers and four years later there was an excess. Farmers are very familiar with years of high yield and other years where it is low. Having the lowest integrity, the climate change movement exploits these natural fluctuations to further its draconian agenda.
I’m not sure of the time period but I believe it was in the late 1700’s where the grape plants in France were being wiped out by a disease that destroyed the roots. The French saved their industry by importing roots from America that were resistant to the disease and graphing their vines onto these roots. This is an example of mankind’s ability to adapt. Should there be some part of the climate change fraud that is actually real, we will adapt.
Once again the Washington Compost prints fake news to their readers and subscribers even more reasons to totally cut off your subscriptions to this Leftists Rag the same with the New York Slimes