France: Trouble on the vine

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Low harvests, economic and climate batterings, changing tastes - is French wine in crisis? The French wine harvest has dropped 18% in one year. For some famous French wine-making regions the reduction has been much more. A combination of factors, including climate, finances and changing drinking habits has brought some wine-makers to the brink. Thousands of hectares of vineyards are being pulled up. Others are struggling to survive. For Assignment John Murphy travels to Bordeaux and Languedoc - the world’s biggest wine-making region - to find out what is going on with wine, France’s most symbolic of products. Producer: Alex Last Studio Mix: Rod Farquhar Programme Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Series Editor: Penny Murphy (Image: Sebastien Danjou in the vineyards of Domaine Danjou-Banessy in Roussillon, in southern France, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Credit: John Murphy/BBC)