Vineyard in Provence near Cassis

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Summer in Provence, a movable feast of rosés and chilled cocktails, icy drinks and al fresco meals, calls to mind the bounty of lush growing months everywhere, but especially in the fabled south of France. Many a wine aficionado contemplates how great it would be to escape to your own vineyard and live off the land. Here, in Arles, on the cusp of official Summer, the third World Living Soils Forum revealed something else: tending the land, and vineyards in particular, with optimum natural practices, is just as rough and tumble a business as the one you might be trying to escape.

Many of the five hundred participants and industry sponsors say they are wrestling every day with the intention to “do the right thing” by the famous triple bottom line – people, profit, and planet. But the path is rarely obvious and there is almost never enough money.

Climate is unpredictable, international trade is equally so, sales are down, multiple global conflicts remain unresolved, and money, both public and private, is tight. Even before this, rising inflation and market impacts have been significant. “We see things have changed and today the way people consume wine, particularly in the south of Europe - in France, Italy and Spain - is very different from what it was some decades ago,” Moët Hennessy CEO Jean-Jacques Guiony told me.

The Forum in Provence was led by LVMH wine and spirits division Moët Hennessy along with Paris-based ChangeNOW, a leader in global collaborations for social and ecological change. Joining in as strategic partners were PwC, Nestlé, Nespresso, Pernod Ricard, and BPCE, the self-described second largest banking group in France.

The International Organization of Wine and Vine reported this spring that global wine exports were estimated at around $40 billion in 2025, close to 7% lower than the previous year. Year-over-year consumption was almost 3% lower, with China, France, and the United States registering the largest contractions.

“Wine consumption is going down, no doubt. Red. And white is flat, and rosé is up,” Guiony reflected. “When it comes to other types of beverages, it’s not entirely clear that consumption is going down. What is clear is that people are consuming less, but the big question is – what are the reasons for that? Is it because they have less money or because they want to drink less.”

In the case of the newest generation of potential customers, the Gen Z population, some influences, besides lifestyle choices, are self-evident. They are loaded with student debt and feel the hot breath of artificial Intelligence breathing down their necks, even as high mortgage rates taunt their dreams of home ownership.

Guiony has thought a lot about this, as you might as a former CFO turned CEO. “If you look at our portfolio, ‘drink less, drink better’ could be a tag line for our business. This is what we do,” he says.

It’s not that younger customers aren’t drinking, says Guiony, it’s that they are consuming “less intensely. One drink, one cocktail, instead of two. Why is that so? Difficult to know. Is it because they want to limit themselves to one cocktail for health reasons or whatever, or is it because cocktails in the U.S. cost $23.00 or $24.00 and when you buy two, that’s a little bit of a hole in your pocket! It’s so expensive.”

The first of these events in Arles, three years ago, raised the curtain on the regenerative agriculture movement, where soil and plant cultivation rely to a great degree, but not exclusively, on organic standards. It is widely accepted that a teaspoon of productive soil generally contains between 100 million and one billion bacteria, thus the name and rallying cry of the Forum. Regenerative agriculture calls for natural farming solutions with chemicals only in last-ditch crop saving situations. Preferred practices include rich composting over chemical fertilizers, the planting of cover crops to manage and enrich strips of soil between rows of vines, and the introduction of farm animals like sheep to strip down those filler crops when harvest is done, fertilizing the soil as they go and helping it to recover its energy ahead of the next season.

Antoine Arnault, LVMH Image and Environment Director, articulated the focus this way. “The goal of living soils is the mother of all battles. It’s critical for the climate because healthy soil stores more carbon, and it’s critical for biodiversity because the soil hosts 50 percent of terrestrial biodiversity, and it’s critical for water because healthy soil retains stores more water. Living soil makes it possible to craft exceptional wines, giving real meaning to the notion of terroir.”

As the global population expands, so does the pressure on agriculture to support humanity. Analysts say that conventional agriculture, with its reliance on chemicals for quick and broad production, is still in play for more than 98% of farming. This is not even considering the dedication of vast expanses of farmland to solar farms. In the case of AI data centers, it’s projected that 40,000 acres of land will be called upon for these purposes, with the U.S., Europe and Asia all involved in the ramp-up.

Biologist and Professor Marc-André Selosse of the French Museum of Natural History in Paris told me that he assesses the overall impact of these developments on the land by asking, “does it allow the land to fulfill the other tasks, besides simply people eating food. If it’s able not to give quite the water, quite the landscape, store carbon, support biodiversity – not for itself but because it contains pollinators or soil fertilizers, biological soil fertilizers, et cetera. And finally: Is it able to make a nice landscape - the kind of landscape where you want to live.”

In this world then, the drive to make the most of both sustainable practices and yield is profound. And the question is asked, have regulators been pushing the thousands and thousands of farmers in the supply chain beyond their physical and financial means to support their businesses.

For his part, Solosse, while acknowledging cancer-related judgments involving the product, glyphosate, does not diminish the pressures that lead struggling farmers to the quick fix of the chemical weed-killer. Widely known at Roundup, a product of Bayer, who bought the product from Monsanto eight years ago, it is the target of thousands of cancer-related lawsuits associated with the product.

“It’s a very easy story. First, when you don’t till, you need something to kill the vegetation (weed growth.) There are different ways but the easiest one, the less costly, and we come back to the help of the society, is not mechanical it’s chemical. It’s the use of herbicide, and glyphosate is one of those.” Guiony of Moët Hennessy would not disagree that regulator expectations for average farmers can be financially back-breaking. “The big point is that, at the end of the day, you should replace RoundUp. RoundUp is not good. We all know that. But we should do it in a practical manner. If you do it too quickly, there are two possible outcomes. Either farmers cheat or their business dies, because they can’t work anymore.”

There is a fourth “bottom line”’ and that is “purpose.” It is associated with an ideal business vision of compassion, sustainability and vision. And if you can say anything about the third World Living Soils Forum, it was a gathering of key players in agriculture, business and science who aspire to this notion of purpose.

In the idyllic historic village of Cotignac, transplanted Englishman Stephen Cronk has created Maison Mirabeau. In 2010, he and his wife decided to follow their dream of establishing a wine business in the south of France. Confronting the degradation of the land by centuries of conventional farming, he entered into an intensive period of education about the soil, ultimately becoming the first regenerative organic certified vineyard in France. Cronk has founded a regenerative movement in his region and, today, a globally focused organization, the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation. Multiple supporters back the Foundation, including LVMH. This, Cronk says, “is meant to accelerate adoption of regenerative practices in vineyards as well as in the wines on shelves. Because wine has a different role to play than potatoes, carrots, chickens and eggs. We over-index in conversations about terroir.”

When it comes to chemicals in agriculture, Cronk is convinced there is a better way, but respects that, when used judiciously, these can be tools with a crop-saving purpose.

Maison Mirabeau has produced multiple Rosés, three of them fully regenerative: Etoile, La Réserve, and One Day. His wines are sold in 40 market internationally and his regenerative wine can be found at Whole Foods Market and Harrods in the UK and several retailers in California and Washington state. It’s also served on Virgin Atlantic.

This year, Mirabeau sold a majority stake to Chilean wine giant Viña Concha y Toro (VCT), positioning the Provence rosé producer within a portfolio that spans three continents. Cronk believes his campaign for regenerative viticulture at scale syncs with the ethos of VCT, which also supports a state-of-the-art Center for Research and Innovation facility in the Maule Valley of Chile.

If ever there were an evangelist for regenerative farming, it is this Englishman who manifested a Provence rosé. And while business and climate conditions globally are unquestionably in various stages of significant stress, his view is that progress doesn't require choosing between feeding the world and healing it. It requires the courage to believe that productivity and regeneration are not opposites, but partners.