The difficulties faced by Bordeaux wines naturally have multiple explanations. Among these, certain marketing directions taken by the CIVB some twenty years ago may have played a role that deserves examination. Two choices seem to us in particular to have had unfavourable consequences for sales. One, the abandonment of promotion and motivation campaigns for the restaurant trade, is in the process of being repaired; but the other, advertising for “Bordeaux” with no link to the high end, is still going strong.
The CIVB has rightly always tried to boost sales of the Bordeaux AOC, which accounts, or accounted, on its own for half of Bordeaux production. It is also the appellation with the lowest prices, and which therefore requires the greatest efforts.
Despite very attractive prices (the CIVB records an average supermarket price of about €4 a bottle), the Bordeaux AOC is nonetheless the one most affected by the fall in consumption, with, in 2025, a 15% drop in volume against a 10% fall for all Bordeaux wines. Producers of the regional appellation have nevertheless made major efforts on prices. The Vitisphère site reported, in its publications of 12 January 2026, on major promotional campaigns that took place at the end of last year, launched by the best-known négoce brands most present in supermarkets, offering discounts exceeding 30%.
At the same time, anyone can see that the image of Bordeaux wine has been somewhat tarnished and, of course, criticisms of Bordeaux wines primarily target the appellation of the same name.
The CIVB’s marketing has not stood idle. Its first action, to better understand this disaffection, was to commission a survey to assess the popularity of Bordeaux wines among the general public. The response was overwhelmingly positive. It is therefore the image, mainly among prescribers, that has been tarnished. A supermarket buyer summed up the problem with the following formula: “Sell more in restaurants and you will sell more in supermarkets.”
In a now fairly distant past, the CIVB marketing department included in its ranks a restaurant promotion unit that carried out various motivation and activation campaigns among these prescribing businesses. It was abolished in the early 2000s in order to transfer its budget to advertising, a vector deemed more modern. It probably should have been kept, and the effects of its disappearance illustrate well the famous marketing adage: “When you stop feeding a market, it dies.” This stoppage was all the more ill-timed as it coincided with the soaring prices of the finest Bordeaux labels, which was enough to put sommeliers and restaurateurs strongly out of sorts. This is connected to the difficulties observed, even in the Gironde capital, in getting restaurateurs to showcase Bordeaux wines.
Fortunately, the vertiginous rise in prices of the greatest Burgundy wines on the one hand, and the fall in prices of the Bordeaux grands crus on the other, should allow the whole industry to regain consumers’ favour, and not only the prestigious brands, because the latter give their image to the entire Bordeaux vineyard. This will be all the more true as CIVB marketing is once again investing in promotion and activation campaigns among restaurants and sommeliers.
The other marketing error, not yet corrected to this day although inspired by the best intentions in the world, consisted in creating advertisements for “Bordeaux” without linking this product to the high end. It is curious that the various CIVB marketing directors who have succeeded one another did not point out to the elected representatives this fundamental principle of their profession: advertising an entry-level product without linking it to the high end is dangerous, because the product’s low hierarchical positioning then leaps out at the consumer.
Such an error is all the more inexplicable as it had already been committed before for Beaujolais nouveau, provoking “Beaujolais bashing”, of which “Bordeaux bashing” seems today to be the successor: the same causes producing the same effects.
Advertising is effective only if the image it offers corresponds to the consumer’s vision. The latter does not want “Bordeaux” presented as a product in itself, unrelated to the grands crus. Quite the contrary, he wants its kinship with the finest labels to be confirmed, so that by drinking a Bordeaux AOC wine he shares in the prestige, elegance and finesse of the classified growths. Without a link to the fine appellations, the regional AOC loses its aura and therefore its appeal. To help the Bordeaux AOC, it must again be linked, in its communication, to the most prestigious wines of the region: this is a necessary condition for its recovery.
