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The Decline of Beaujolais: Three Decades of Value Destruction

September 20, 2021 / / 0 Comments

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.

Value destruction in Beaujolais — only vineyards producing Beaujolais crus resisted a three-decade slide

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.

The fading foreign appeal of Beaujolais

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.

French Vineyard Prices Climb in Pandemic Year

May 28, 2021 / / 0 Comments

French vineyard values shrugged off the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, with average wine property prices lifted by deals in the most expensive parts of Bordeaux. Less prestigious growing areas didn’t do as well, with prices sliding in some regions.

The cost of buying a hectare of vines, a plot the size of a rugby pitch, rose 1.6% to 150,500 euros last year, according to data from Safer, France’s rural property agency. Prices have more than tripled since 1997, with a mostly uninterrupted rise over that period.

Excluding the Champagne region, the cost of vines with a French appellation of origin increased 4.3% to a record 78,100 euros per hectare. The sparkling-wine region north-east of Paris is the country’s most expensive overall, accounting for 52% of France’s total vineyard real estate by value and skewing the numbers.

The health crisis did impact the number of wine-property transactions, down 11% to 8,190 as estate visits became more complicated and buyers pulled out. That was the lowest in data going back almost 30 years, below the previous low point of 2009 after the financial crisis.

The overall value of property changing hands fell 13% to 861 million euros. Only in the Bordeaux-Aquitaine region did the total value of wine-real estate transactions rise, up 4.7% to 231 million euros, even as the number of deals declined 21%.

In Bordeaux, eight sales of prestigious estates accounted for 72% of the transaction value, according to Safer. Those deals helped explain a 9% increase in average vineyard prices in France’s second-most valuable wine region.

Safe Haven Bordeaux

In Pauillac on the Left Bank of the Gironde estuary, the average price for a hectare climbed 22% to 2.8 million euros. As the large estates gobble up the remaining small vineyard owners of Pauillac, Saint-Julien and Margaux year after year, property prices could continue to rise, according to Safer. The top-end properties are seen as safe-haven investments at a time of financial uncertainty, the agency said.

The lofty heights for Bordeaux’s elite names contrast with more down-to-earth growing areas, with generic-label Bordeaux vines falling 13% to 13,000 euros per hectare. Vineyards producing generic Medoc slumped 20% to an average 40,000 euros per hectare, as the area struggles with faltering exports and supermarket sales, Safer said.

Two developments of note in Bordeaux’s more affordable wine areas: certified-organic vines in good health traded at a premium, and plots sensitive to freezing had a hard time finding buyers. The latter seems prescient, with France suffering its most damaging spring frost in decades this year, and climate change increasing the risk of such events.

In Burgundy, prices hikes were more modest than for its bigger rival, but across the board. While the price of grand cru vines that traded rose 4.1% to 6.77 million euros per hectare, regional Burgundy appellations – the cheapest wine property in the Cote d’Or departement – rose 4.9% to an average 47,200 euros.

A priceless view in Burgundy.

Champagne values mostly declined, with the average per-hectare price slipping 1.3% to 1.1 million euros. The grand and premier cru vines of Montagne de Reims and Grande Vallée proved more resilient, climbing 7.2% to average 1.24 million euros per hectare.

Resilient Cognac

In Cognac, the protected origin that exclusively supplies the grapes used to produce the eponymous spirit, prices climbed across the appellation. Cognac exports have remained relatively resilient during the pandemic, after years of growing demand from countries including the U.S. and China.

Vineyard prices on average fell in the production areas of Alsace, Languedoc-Roussillon and south-west France. The cost of buying vines for making wine in Corsica continued to rise, even as Safer said very little property changed hands.

Overall wine property values rose in Val de Loire-Centre, with the Loire Valley presenting a study in contrasts. While the price of vines in Sancerre jumped 29% to 220,000 euros per hectare, the biggest gain in the data published by Safer, the more modest origin of Bourgeuil slumped 30%.

I’ll take a more localized dive into the Safer data in coming days and weeks, including a look at the longer trends for some appellations in places such as Bordeaux and the Loire Valley. So don’t hesitate to check back in at Wine Graphs!

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