One speaks of a “belated recession” in Great Britain, which means that the recession is well under way, but that the effects won’t be obvious until in a few weeks.
We are worried about the organic wine sector, just as everybody is, but we also think that the market is much stronger today to confront the crisis than it was in the earlier periods of recession that England has faced.
The demand has developped, it is stable, much more so than 15 years ago. The organic wine market has known a difficult start, and the history of our organisation reflects this: between 1985 and 1990, we experienced a strong growth, essentially due to the fact that we started from scratch, but then there were five difficult years. But since 1995, the organic wine market experienced a solid and constant growth in Great Britain.

France is at the top, since the beginning. The offer of organic wines from other countries has developped, but rather towards the bottom of the range, with wines from Spain or Italy, but also from Chili and Argentina. The progession of French sales has been rather sluggish for a few years now and the competition is nibbling on France’s marketshare. Though, one shouldn’t lose track of a part of our clients (about 5-10%) that were introduced to organic wines through the New World, as they are less expensive, but turn to French wines when their educated palate demands something more authentic.

Our priority is not to condemn conventional agriculture and its products to get the consumer to turn to organics out of rejection. The ethical approach is one element in our discourse, but we sell organic wines primarily because they are good wines, we prefer therefore to communicate on their values: quality, transparency, tradition and confidence.

(Laughs) When speaking about France, there is always the interesting question of the mentality of the French. They are capable of being very conservative about their lifestyle and I think this is good in a world of standardization. The French are aware of their conservatism, but, nevertheless, their just fight for taste, all the while being also aware that this struggle weighs them down on the sales front.
One has to be clear: France has done more against the standardization of taste than any other country, but still the French have to learn how to take the advantages without denying the benefits of innovation!
That’s a lot of talk, but I have precise examples in mind here: five years ago, we could communicate, place orders, pay our contractors by Internet, wherever they were in the world… but not in France: one always needed a letter or a telephone call to confirm. Another: non-French contractors are more flexible about labelling: if their labels don’t appeal to us, if we think that they risk harming the sales, they are willing to change them without making a fuss. With our French contractors, this is much more difficult: as soon as the label is concerned, rationality and performance issues tend to fly out the window and the debate centers around people’s identity and history. If my only goal were to make profit, the French would be in a serious disadvantage, but I understand them and I support them. I support them even more, because, as I already said, many French people are perfectly aware of the dilemma they are in.