Never strikes twice...

They say lightening never strikes twice but what about bad spring frosts? Well, in 1991 the whole west coast of France was hit by a devastating frost which caused a loss of about 90% of crop in Muscadet. This coincided, at least in the UK and Ireland, with the arrival of Jacob's Creek which meant that shelf space lost was never regained. As a consequence, Muscadet growers struggled to make a living and quite a few went out of business. So, what have they all done to deserve a second hit?
In 2008 a big frost wiped out about 50% of the potential crop and, even though 2009 was a good vintage in Muscadet it was recently reported by Decanter that 60 growers have filed for bankruptcy and it appears that 150 - 200 could be out of business within the next year.
It is one of those things that make you realise how difficult it is to make a living from growing grapes and making wine. When you consider how much of the money you spend on a bottle of wine actually gets into the hands of the people who made it you should, at the very least, experience a deep moral shudder. On a €5.99 bottle of wine, you pay about €0.33 for the wine whereas our government (those paragons of fiscal rectitude) get €2.97 - that's 9 times more for doing nothing!
At €11.99 the grower gets €2.81 while the government gets only €7.93 but that's not a lot of money. How much do you think someone needs to earn to have a decent standard of living - €35,000 per annum? €50,000? At €3 per bottle that grower needs to sell 12,000 bottles or 1,000 cases. That might not seem like a lot but if your annual production is 4 - 5,000 cases and you lose half of that overnight life starts getting tough, particularly given that, in your best export market the UK, the supermarkets are driving prices down aggressively.
I suppose the average punter is not expected to understand things like pricing but it frightens me, sometimes, when I see how people quibble over spending €15, say, on a bottle when the person who produced that wine might be getting only €4.00 for their efforts. It gets worse if you think too strongly about wines produced in South Africa or South America where the average vineyard worker is likely to be paid less than €1.00 per bottle while the estate owner gets the majority of whatever margin there is. Still, at least they have a job...
I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say here or whether I just would like people to think a bit more about the consequences of their actions - we did in relation to apartheid, for example. Also, I think we should have some sympathy for people whose livelihood can be wiped out by one night of frost - especially twice in 19 years.