From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Remember all those times you’ve been told wine is facing a climate crisis?

France blames climate change for ‘deteriorating’ wine industry. But is uprooting vines the solution?

By Liam Gilliver
Published on 29/11/2025 – 8:00 GMT+1

France says it is ‘determined’ to rescue the wine industry from a crisis, but could its plan backfire?

France has turned to the European Union for help after announcing additional funds to help rescue its “deteriorating” wine industry.

Earlier this week, the French Agriculture Ministry confirmed it has allocated €130 million to finance a new, permanent vine-pulling plan to “rebalance supply” and “restore the viability” of struggling farms in the most vulnerable regions.

This process involves severing and lifting the vines and their roots from the soil, usually using specialised equipment like a deep plough, and can cost around €1,000 per hectare. 

Minister Annie Genevard has also asked the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Chrisophe Hansen, to finance the crisis distillation of non-marketable overstocks. This is where excess supply is turned into alcohol used for industrial purposes rather than consumption.

…

It comes after Donald Trump threatened to impose a 200 per cent tariff on European alcohol earlier this year, a move which was quickly rescinded. However, a 15 per cent tariff on exports to the US, a crucial market for the French wine industry, was announced several months later.

…

To top it all off, Genevard argued the sector’s suffering has been compounded byclimate change, which has “repeatedly impacted harvests” for several years.

…Read more: https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/11/29/france-blames-climate-change-for-deteriorating-wine-industry-but-is-uprooting-vines-the-so

It’s all President Trump’s fault of course.

Can you imagine some government official coming onto a US farmer’s land, and telling them they have to uproot some of their crops, to help the farmer next door avoid bankruptcy?

What really strikes me about this story is the problem is overproduction – yet we are continuously told the wine industry is suffering a climate crisis.

The Wall Street Journal’s Left Turn on Climate Change Is Unjustified, the ‘Finer Things in Life’ Are Widely Available

Clearly that climate crisis is creating too much wine, so much so the French government wants to kill lots of grape vines. Not exactly the narrative we have all been given by our lapdog mainstream media.