His letter begins as follows: “Mr. President of the French Republic.” A letter with simple words, “emergency”, “perverse effect”, “Russian roulette”, so that “everyone understands”, it doesn’t matter if you are not a wine specialist. Written on the front of a missive from his bank, the first piece of paper that came to his fingertips, Quentin Bourse had not “Written for fifteen years”. His letter ends with these words: “Our campaigns have suffered enough drama already and much more will play out in the months to come without strong and meaningful action from your government.”
The 36-year-old winemaker is, with his partner Angélique, at the head of a small 12-hectare estate, a flint clay soil planted in Touraine, in Azay-le-Rideau, where he makes organic wine, with complex associations, served on good tables in Paris, New York or Montreal. Two weeks ago, he learned that his crop insurance, this guarantee which covers farmers against bad weather, will increase from 25,000 euros to 48,000 euros in 2022. “An increase of 82%” from his bank which leaves him only two choices, he notes: “give in to this ecological racket by paying this ransom, without knowing to what extent this contribution will evolve” Where “the immediate cessation of our agricultural activity”.
His cry, shared on the networks and taken up on the guide’s website fooding, is not just his. Many winegrowers, and more generally farmers, shaken by a feeling of abandonment on the part of the State, are confronted with this infernal knot: how to produce good and respectful, terroirs and people, in the face of the climate crisis , these episodes of cold and dryness which multiply?
An “unfair and excluding” reform
The government gave its answer at the beginning of January with its bill aimed at reforming the system of agricultural disasters, adopted at first reading in the Assembly and examined in the Senate on Tuesday. It proposes a new model encouraging the use of private insurance since farmers covered by a private policy will receive 50% more state compensation than those who do not take out insurance. The bill, supported by the FNSEA, a productivist union, is denounced by the Rural Coordination and the Peasant Confederation. The latter sees it as a reform “unfair and excluding”Who “concentrates on private harvest insurance the public support intended for the compensation of peasants and peasants in the face of climatic hazards”. With a risk, that of an abrupt increase in private insurance rates…
Quentin Bourse is a grape nerd, born in the vineyard in 2009 when he didn’t drink a drop of alcohol. At the time, he just chained “twelve jobs in twelve years”. At the Quick, in the markets, in the driving school, in the fields. He “from nothing” but is carried by an unspeakable thirst, model the wine system, “correlate terroirs and barrels”, do good “with people who last”. Le Sot de l’ange, his vineyard, blossomed in 2015 and met with success from the start. Success in viticulture is precarious: spring brings frost, it’s the annual lottery. Some years, such as 2016 or 2021 (a “agronomic disaster” in the words of the Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie), he loses all or almost all of his harvest.
“There is beauty and it must be saved”
When he was preparing his vineyard project, in 2012, Quentin Bourse identified a syndrome. That’s why I wrote to you “scorched earth”. When the ground no longer has “no value according to capital”, because it becomes too expensive to insure. “That day has come, tells the man Freed. But it’s not for the ground to jump. Whether we’re dealing with potatoes or vines, it’s the same thing. What’s the point ? We burn 10,000 liters of oil for five mornings of frost? Produce pools of tarpaulins like in Spain? Grow only cereals?”
Quentin Bourse assures that he lost seven kilos in a few days, but that he is pushed by the protection of a triptych family, land, territory. “I’m not into misery, I don’t want to be the bird of bad omen. There is beauty and it must be saved.” And at the same time he says: “There are going to be suicides.” He is a “irreducible Gauls”. “I have a tattoo of Falbala on my left arm and magic potion to spare for everyone. Fear must change sides.”