A member of one of France's most well respected winemaking families says consumers played a major part in helping to reduce an over-production of French wine.
Production exceeded demand by 400 million litres in 2006.
Damien Barton Sartorius from Chateau Leoville Barton in Bordeaux, who's in Hawke's Bay for two months, says a lot of effort has gone into reducing the quantity of wine made in France.
He says it's been helped by a change in consumer attitude and where as previously French people would have a bottle of wine on the table which they would mix with water, this is not common now.
Mr Barton Sartorius says large quantities of these sorts of wines were produced, but they were very light and quite low quality.
Because consumers no longer asked for that type of wine, producers were forced to change.
He says wine makers are now limited in how much they are allowed to produce and realise that they need to make quality wines if they want to sell them.
