The Beaujolais wine region has been nursing an extended, three-decade hangover. After a period of booming demand for Beaujolais Nouveau wine at the end of the 20th century, the reputational damage caused by low-quality wine sold under that label has been hard to shake, and vineyard real estate prices have taken a tumble.
With grape harvesting in the region started just over a week ago, the 2021 “nouveau” will be uncorked in two months, on the traditional third Thursday of November. The very young wine accounted for a whopping 30% of the region’s production in 2019, according to data from the local wine board.
After the gold rush
The rush to bottle Beaujolais Nouveau caused some producers in the 1990s and 2000s to flood the market with light wines of dubious quality, famously associated with banana flavours. While the craze passed, the image of low-grade wine stuck, providing a lesson on the perils of short-term gains versus long-term interests.
Few wine regions in France have suffered anything like the plunge in vineyard prices recorded in Beaujolais over the past 30 years. Over that period, the cost of a hectare of Beaujolais-Villages vines slumped 82%, while regular Beaujolais wine property fell around 73%. That’s nominal value, so not adjusted for inflation.
Buying a hectare of vines with the Beaujolais-Villages appellation cost about 9,000 euros in 2020, annual data from rural property agency Safer shows. In 2000, that same area would have cost 36,200 euros – a slide of 75%. Only a few areas in the Bordeaux region experienced anything that comes close, especially Sauternes.
Considering the slide for “regular” Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages, vineyards with a communal Appellation d’Origine Protégée (Protected Designation of Origin) outperformed. The Beaujolais crus – including Moulin-a-Vent, Morgon and Brouilly – lost 3.2% of their vineyard value since 1991, with most seeing rising prices in the past decade.
Lagging the average
Still, even the region’s most prestigious areas have lagged average vineyard prices in France, which more than doubled in the past 30 years.
The decline in wine real estate prices in Beaujolais comes as exports for the region tumbled in the past 25 years. Among the French production regions for which EU statistics office Eurostat provides a breakdown, only Beaujolais recorded a drop in export value, down 38% since 1995.
To compare, the Loire Valley nearly doubled the value of its wine shipments abroad, Burgundy and Bordeaux more than doubled their export value and the Rhone Valley tripled its exports since 1995.
If there’s a bright spot, it may be the French home market. Beaujolais was the only red AOC wine to maintain stable sales in supermarkets in 2020 compared with the five-year average, while the other main production regions recorded declines, according to Symphony IRI data published by FranceAgriMer.
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