Guy Lautier lives in Puisserguier (Herault Department) and is a good example of one of the many facets of French agriculture. Since the revolution in transportation at the end of the 19th century, this region has been exclusively dedicated to the growing of grapes for wine production. The vines were cultivated on low lands by the sea, or on the first hills inland, bringing at times either prosperity or stagnation.

Faced with periodic difficulties in trying to sell their wines, producers long ago learned to organize themselves into cooperatives. In each village the cooperative produces, stores, and sells the wine.

Nowadays they try, with varying success from one place to the next, to recover from the latest crisis: reduced wine consumption, a demand for higher quality, and the opening of national borders. Additionally, the amount of fallow land has increased, due to policies of the European Union requiring the pulling up of vines, and their replacement by other crops, has not proven itself.

The Puisserguier cooperative, presided over by Guy Lautier, innovates vigorously by reorganizing fields, improving the varieties grown and the wine production methods, dealing with marketing, the environment, and potential buyers.

All this change bears heavily on the cooperative, which is modernizing its ways of functioning.

The wine producers of Languedoc-Roussillon have become producers of excellent wines that are now sold all over the world.

WorldHomepage