France’s wine production nears a 70-year low, leaving winemakers with tough choices

Florent Latour, CEO of the largest owner of Grand Cru vineyards in Burgundy, spent the summer praying for rain. 

“We felt we were so close,” Latour, who’s head of Maison Louis Latour, told CNBC. “Just a bit more rain would have produced a fantastic harvest on both counts, but we had to settle for quality, and about half of a harvest.”

His prayers — and frustrations — are being echoed across France, as a record-hot summer and severe droughts hit the country’s world-famous wine industry hard. 

France’s agriculture ministry has warned that wine production could hit a 70-year low in 2026, marking the third year of reduced output.

“The 2023 vintage was decent, but yields have been pretty disastrous since the start of the decade,” said Jean-Marie Cardebat, chair of wines and spirits at the INSEEC Grande École university. “We are realizing that no region in France is safe from heatwaves today.”

Paradoxically, the regions that suffer the most are those with more temperate climates, namely the Loire Valley and Champagne. In contrast, winemakers in the southern regions of Bordeaux and Languedoc-Roussillon reported higher harvests compared to last year.

For Cardebat, also an economics professor at the University of Bordeaux, France’s poor preparation in the face of climate change is a big problem. 

“Spain is more often affected by heatwaves and global warming; however, it is better prepared,” he said. “Partly because it already has an irrigation network in place.”

This is rare in France, he said, and permitted only in exceptional cases. “In France, setting up such measures takes time.”

 The impacts of climate change are heightening the debate around the strict rules that govern France’s wine sector.

Last year, Chateau Lafleur caused a storm by withdrawing from the prestigious Pomerol and wider Bordeaux official designations for their six wines.

Owned by the Guinaudeau family, the estate said that rigid appellation (AOC) rules — which include irrigation restrictions, planting densities, and permitted grape varieties among others — prevented it from adapting quickly enough to the changing climate.

Moving away from these rules will allow the vineyard to deal with “the reality of climate change with precision and effectiveness,” the Guinaudeau family explained at the time. “It is a bold decision that enables the entire Lafleur Family … to ensure the perennity of our vineyards and the quality and identity of our wines. In a word: the future.”

High temperatures also mean earlier harvests, which can cause major logistical problems for winemakers. 

“This year we started on the 14th of August, which is the earliest ever for the Latour domaine … What we’ve seen, if you take it per decade, is that the midpoint of the harvest is three days earlier every decade, so essentially we’ve moved a month since the 1930s,” Latour said.

It means one of the biggest challenges around harvesting these days is “a human one,” he added.

“You have to have the flexibility to get your team in the vineyard at essentially a moment’s notice because your predictions turn out to be wrong,” Latour said. 

The economic impact of these changes on the sector — and wider economy — could be significant. 

This year’s harvest “could push us back to third place among wine-producing countries — whereas 12 to 15 years ago, we were still first, ahead of Italy. Now Italy is clearly in the lead,” Cardebat said. “Spain could overtake us. This drop to third place indicates that France has a genuine production problem.”

He said the shift is symbolic, but also important. “It represents a massive loss of potential revenue for France and for the companies involved.”

In early September, the government downgraded France’s growth forecast to 0.5% (from 1% earlier this year), estimating that the heatwave and drought will cost France 0.1 percentage point of growth this year.

Meanwhile, on wine estates, production costs run increasingly high.

“Treasuries are currently depleted. The more the climate is disrupted, the less capacity there is to invest — even though we need to invest more … You can see that we are being drawn into a vicious circle,” Cardebat said.

“I looked at business failures. They have tripled in the wine sector between 2019 and 2025. I think 2026 risks being just as catastrophic from this point of view.”

At the end of the summer, the French Government announced an emergency aid plan worth over 1 billion euros ($1.15 billion) to support farmers and winegrowers affected by heatwaves.

This need for investment to adapt could accelerate consolidation in the sector, with Cardebat noting a clear trend of estates getting larger and larger over the past quarter of a century. 

“Quality does require, I think, a certain scale at this point in time, because of all this human resources, equipment and facilities investment. It’s easier to absorb these costs with a certain scale,” Latour said, although he added that “to be family-owned and family-run, is these days much more appreciated, maybe in a way that was not as much in the past.”

And in 2026, around 4% of all of France’s vines will be pulled as part of a government support program where growers will receive 4,000 euros ($4,590) per hectare for permanently removing vines.

This crisis point in French wine is leading its key players to consider new markets, products and generations — fast. 

“Different products, completely different packaging like ready-to-drink options. The United States are an excellent testing ground for this, on how to win people over with new products,” Cardebat said. 

He also cited South America, Brazil and India as promising new markets for French wine thanks to the swathe of new trade deals signed over recent years. 

For Latour, the younger generation, and looking further afield, is key. “What’s important is … to make great quality wine more accessible, price-wise.”

South America and Brazil are both now important markets for Maison Louis Latour, he said, as is the African continent, given its younger demographic.

These shifts mean Latour remains optimistic about the future of France’s winemaking sector, despite the challenges, at least for now. 

“I think that obviously we need to do a great job at explaining the context of the wine that we’re serving, its appellation, explaining the history,” he added. “As long as we’re able to do this and in a way that is simple and also meaningful to the younger generation, and as long as quality is there and can be appreciated by the consumer, we have, I think, a very attractive future.”