France’s annual supermarket wine sales: dates and deals autumn 2024

The annual autumn wine promotion in nearly all French supermarkets and hypermarkets is set to launch with even prestigious bottles of Bordeaux, Côtes-du-Rhône, Bourgogne and Champagne on offer at low prices.

The autumn wine sales, known as the foires aux vins, are organised to help wine retailers and wholesalers free up their storage for new bottles.

Traditionally the foires aux vins had a strong link with the Bordeaux wines, which were once the most widely drunk at home.

Even in 2023, the foires aux vins still accounted for 18% of all of Bordeaux region’s sales.

The special relationship was formed in the crisis which followed the Gulf war in the late 1990s, when American boycotts of French wines caused a crisis among the top Bordeaux producers.

They were rescued by a deal with the Leclerc hypermarkets and supermarkets which had pioneered the foires aux vins in the early 1970s, initially only in the north-west.

Changing times and tastes

White and rosé wines have overtaken reds, accounting for 58% of consumption against 42% for red in 2023.

Read more: Red wine sales in France plummet as white and rosé triumph

As such, a wider range of wines is available in the sales, and even the Bordeaux region is adapting.

“What is new this year is the rise in our Crémants de Bordeaux,” said Christophe Chateau, of the Bordeaux wine trade body Conseil Interprofessonnel du vin de Bordeaux.

“Bordeaux used to be a very small crémant producer - only 2% of the French production - but more and more vineyards are starting some production and it is very successful.”

Crémants are French wines from outside Champagne but which are made by traditional champagne methods, including harvesting only by hand, and turning the bottles in racks by hand during the wine making process.

Many French people have their own favourite crémant, although they also bring out the much more expensive Champagne for guests and parties.

The Alsace region is the leading producer of crémant, followed by Burgundy (Bourgogne) and the Loire.

Mr Chateau said the growing success of the Crémants de Bordeaux came from many of them using grapes traditionally grown for red wines.

“They give fresh wines but with flavours which are sometimes different from most sparkling wines and the public seems to like them.

”We have high hopes that the upward trend will be reflected in this year’s foires.”

Most crémants are priced between €5 and €10 a bottle during the sales.

Champagne can also be found during the event, including bargain bottles for less than €20, allowing people who plan ahead to stock-up for New Year. 

But again the inclusion of Champagne in the foire aux vins appears somewhat controversial.

The Champagne trade body Comité Champagne does not collect any figures relating to sales during the foires.

Alcohol consumption falling

France is still the second-largest wine market in the world, behind only the United States, says FranceAgriMer.

But its latest five-yearly survey, published in December 2023, and covering 2022, found wine is not escaping from a long-standing decline in the amount of alcohol drunk in France.

French people now drink 70% less alcohol than they did in 1960, and in 2022, only 11% of the French population regularly drank wine, compared to 16% five years earlier.

But the number of people who say they never drink wine has remained steady at 37% of the population since 2010, and wine is associated with conviviality by most French people.

The agency's figures say that in the year January to August 2024, 4.8 million hectolitres of still wine were sold in supermarkets in France worth €2.5 billion. 

By volume it was a fall of 5%, and by value 3% compared to the same period in 2023.

Wine production sales in France are worth around €12 billion annually, while associated industries account for an extra €17 billion.