Gabriel & Co, a Fair For Life certified company, is a unique case in the French vineyard. The small trading company created by Jean-François Réaud, winegrower in Blayais, in Gironde, pushes the solidarity cap far with this fair trade label, generally reserved for North-South trade. But it says a lot about the inequalities of the Bordeaux wine industry between its prosperous estates – around 20% of the 6,000 farms – and its Third World.
Protean self-help groups
It also illustrates a basic trend among independent winegrowers, increasingly attracted to collectives. The two words are no longer contradictory. These protean self-help groups – associative, capital-intensive or simply contractual around a committed entrepreneur – often arise from an economic necessity, generally commercial. Or climatic in the case of the Vignerons Solidaires, which come to the aid of colleagues who are victims of hail or frost by providing them with grapes. The collectives represent much more than “business” for their members, united by common values around the terroirs, the grape varieties, their love of a job well done and the defense of their profession.
In the 1990s, Jean-François Réaud strove to sell in bottles the wine that the trade bought in bulk at high prices. In the grip of serious financial difficulties, he knocked on the door of estates with whom he sometimes exchanged equipment to offer them to “go further and market together, targeting large surfaces”.
Today, Gabriel & Co has 34 members for 40 châteaux and 1,000 hectares, on the Right Bank and in Entre-deux-Mers. The company markets six million bottles, bottled on a shared mobile line. “This wine pays its winemaker a fair price”, states the label, with the photo of the said producer. Jean-François Réaud claims the creation of “an unprecedented economic model in Bordeaux”, which respects the identity of the winegrower while borrowing from the cooperative cellar, with three-year contracts, and from trading, since it buys stocks for resell them under the common brand – discreet on the capsule.
A single watchword: stay united
The contracts guarantee producers a purchase price 20% above the course, but also 5 to 10% (conventional or organic) above the cost of production. A godsend when a third of Bordeaux winegrowers work below the break-even point. Despite the downward revision of the contracts, this year, in order to remain competitive, all the winegrowers remained with Gabriel & Co. “As they did not leave the ship in the better times when they could have emancipated themselves. The collective is united”, says Jean-François Réaud.
In Languedoc, Pierre Bories is in the same logic with the Artisans Partisans collective, which assumes as its motto “Freedom, Nature, Terroir”, the fist brandished and clenched on a bunch of vines. At the head of four estates, including Ollieux Romanis, in Montséret, in Aude, Pierre Bories believes that he has reached “a critical mass which has enabled us, with a demanding vision of viticulture and wine, to create value in a region with an entry-level image”.
Today, he wishes to communicate this ambition, as philosophical as it is economic, to people who share with him practices in the vineyard (organic or biodynamic cultivation), in the cellar (indigenous yeasts, little or no sulphites) and, above all, convictions: the defense of Languedoc and peasant agriculture, with the return to polyculture (he is a lamb breeder) and the development of agroforestry… “Artisans Partisans is not made to sell three bottles It aims to create collective value to allow our winegrowers to live from their work and to hire young people to ensure the future of the vineyard.”
Winegrowers need to be in the field more than ever
The oldest collective dates back to 1981: Bourgogne de Vigne en Verre (BVV) was set up by “winemakers who still sold in bulk, wanted to switch to bottles, but did not want to spend their time in salons and airports. to play the VRP”, explains the director Nicolas Dewe. Two, then quickly ten domains (thirteen in 2023), resulting from as many different names so as not to compete with each other, have come together in a common logistics and distribution company, co-shareholders in equal shares.
The structure makes purchase-resale, with just the margin necessary to ensure its operation and pay its thirteen employees. “Today, with the problems of vine disease, climatic hazards, cultural practices that require more and more work, winegrowers need to be in the field more than ever,” says Nicolas Dewe. BVV takes care of the rest, storage, orders, shipments, invoices… right up to the legal watch on the export details: “We print their back labels with the required information.”
The model has made school. Vini Be Good was born in the Loire, in 1999, on the initiative of 20 winegrowers, all organic, activists of the Loire renaissance on family properties of 15 to 20 hectares. They too were passionate about their vines, less about trade. From the source to the estuary, the co-shareholders brought together by their common doctrine have gradually been able to do without trading and entrust the exclusivity of their production to Vini Be Good: more than 1 million bottles distributed in 2022 with an advantageous added value with delicatessens, wine merchants and restaurants. And 30% for export. They keep control of the short circuit, around their property.
“We are all pushing in the same direction”
For “hunting in a pack”, Ambiance Rhône Terroir also appeared in 2006 (8 families, 12 crus, 20 AOC), Terroirs et Talents en Beaujolais, the following year (7 HVE3 certified estates), or South-West Java in 2008. “We are a capitalist kolkhoz”, assures Laurent Alvarez, the France director. “One winegrower, one voice.”. This Economic Interest Grouping (and not a company like the others) distributes eight estates from Madiran to Cahors, via Fronton. Not enough to form a rugby team but “as in the scrum, we all push in the same direction”. They are lastingly linked by the friendship of their owners, the cause of the appellations (Java has three presidents of AOC in its ranks) and the defense of the identity grape varieties of the South-West – 120 in number. Laurent Alvarez is very proud: “Orders mix an average of five to six winegrowers. There are no left outs.”
In the same sector, A Bisto de Nas has brought together 12 100% organic estates since 2015. And not the least: Camin Larreydia in Jurançon, Cosse-Maisonneuve in Cahors, Plageoles in Gaillac… These “strong identities” are united by their culture of a peasantry “in harmony with the living” and the quest for “authentic taste”, guided by intuition: “a bisto de nas” means “at a glance” in Occitan.
For Françoise Antech, in Limoux, the collective has become consubstantial with the profession. She herself is involved in three different groups: the ViniFilles association for mutual aid and conviviality – “sharing laughter and tears” -, Vino Tribu for trade, and Les Quilles du Sud for shared press relations with four other winegrowers. “In the future, for the little ones, it will become impossible to be left alone,” she predicts.