2024-12-03
31 分钟Low harvests, economic and climate batterings, changing tastes - is French wine in crisis? The French wine harvest has dropped 18% in one year. For some famous French wine-making regions the reduction has been much more. A combination of factors, including climate, finances and changing drinking habits has brought some wine-makers to the brink. Thousands of hectares of vineyards are being pulled up. Others are struggling to survive. For Assignment John Murphy travels to Bordeaux and Languedoc - the world’s biggest wine-making region - to find out what is going on with wine, France’s most symbolic of products.
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Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
I'm John Murphy and for assignment, I'm in France, diving into the world of wine.
We are in the ugly valley, the Agli Valley.
Yeah, Agli is the name of the river, comes from eagle, because there are a lot of eagles in this part of France, Southern France.
The Agli Valley is a very interesting valley for winemaking because first there are a lot of different types of stones of earth, which gives the taste of the wine and of the fruits as well.
But it stopped raining three years ago.
Four years ago.
It's the most important problem we have ever had.
Sebastien d'anjou is driving his battered 4x4 around his vineyards above the valley with its dry riverbed, pointing out the different plots he and his brother Benoit cultivate.
Like many winemakers across France, they're struggling with a rapidly changing and unpredictable climate.
It's extreme, the climate, it's becoming more and more extreme.
When it rains, it rains too much.
When the wind blows, it blows so strong, strongly that it breaks everything.
And when it's dry, it's too dry.