The Top 10 Most Profitable Wine Regions in France

Champagne-Ardenne generated the highest net economic value per hectare of vineyard land among France’s wine regions in 2024, according to a new ranking circulated by the American Association of Wine Economists, placing the area not only at the top in France but also first among all European regions included in the study.

The region posted €60,030 per hectare, far ahead of Bourgogne, or Burgundy, which ranked second in France at €25,312 per hectare. The gap between the two came to €34,718 per hectare, meaning Champagne-Ardenne produced well over twice the net value of Burgundy on the measure used in the ranking.

The figures come from the European Union’s Farm Accountancy Data Network, known as FADN, and were compiled in a table released by the AAWE. The ranking is based on what the data calls net value added of the holding per hectare of vineyard area, not on the purchase price of vineyard land or on real estate values.

That distinction matters in a country where vineyard land prices often draw the most attention. The indicator in this ranking measures economic performance at the farm level. It is calculated by taking total output and subtracting intermediate consumption and depreciation, then adding the balance of subsidies and taxes. The result is meant to reflect what remains to compensate the fixed factors of the business, including labor, land and capital. Total output can also include income tied directly to the farm, such as agritourism.

In practice, the ranking offers a picture of how much economic value a specialized wine-growing operation creates on average for each hectare it farms, using the accounting framework of the European Union. It does not show the final profit of any individual vineyard owner, and it does not correspond to a bottle price, a vineyard sale price or the boundaries of an appellation.

After Champagne-Ardenne and Bourgogne, the third French region in the national ranking was Franche-Comté, with €16,100 per hectare. The distance between Bourgogne and Franche-Comté was €9,212 per hectare. Franche-Comté also placed ninth in the European table.

France placed three regions in the European top 10: Champagne-Ardenne in first, Bourgogne in fourth and Franche-Comté in ninth. Only Italy had more, with four regions in the European top 10. Bourgogne’s fourth-place European finish put it behind Champagne-Ardenne, Alto Adige and Valle d’Aosta.

The rest of the French list showed a sharp drop after the top three. Alsace ranked fourth nationally at €8,048 per hectare, which was €8,052 below Franche-Comté. That result placed Alsace 25th in the European ranking.

Corse, or Corsica, was fifth among French regions at €6,227 per hectare, followed by Pays de la Loire at €5,710. The difference between the two was €517 per hectare.

Rhône-Alpes ranked seventh in France at €4,828 per hectare. Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur followed in eighth place at €3,453. Midi-Pyrénées was ninth at €2,527, and Aquitaine rounded out the French top 10 at €2,489.

The narrowest gap in the French top 10 was at the bottom of the list, where only €38 per hectare separated Midi-Pyrénées and Aquitaine. The widest contrast was between first and 10th place. Champagne-Ardenne outperformed Aquitaine by €57,541 per hectare on the same measure.

Another French region, Languedoc-Roussillon, appeared in the broader European table with €1,091 per hectare. That placed it outside the French top 10 and 59th out of the 60 European regions included.

The ranking uses the territorial divisions employed by FADN, which means the names in the table do not refer to appellations, provinces or wine areas defined by regulatory bodies. In France, that point is especially relevant because some of the names used in farm accounting and statistical systems overlap only partially with the wine regions consumers know from labels.

Champagne-Ardenne, for example, is the regional unit used in the accounting data, not a direct synonym for the Champagne appellation. The same applies elsewhere in the ranking. Bourgogne in the table is a statistical territory; it is not a separate measure of the legally protected Burgundy appellation system. The results should therefore be read as averages for specialized commercial wine-growing holdings located in those administrative areas.

The data also reflect the structure of each farm as a whole. A holding’s average value per hectare can be influenced by its mix of vineyard production, on-farm processing, direct sales and related activities connected to the estate. In regions where wine production is tied to strong branding, export demand or tourism, those factors can help raise the economic value recorded by the farm accounts, even though the ranking itself does not break down each source of income in detail.

For France’s wine sector, the results underline how uneven the country’s vineyard economics can be when measured by value created per hectare. Champagne-Ardenne’s lead over Bourgogne is striking on its own, but the wider spread across the list is just as notable. The top French region generated nearly 24 times the level recorded for Languedoc-Roussillon in the same European table.

The publication of the ranking comes as wine growers across Europe face rising labor costs, climate pressure, shifts in consumption and growing interest in vineyard tourism as a source of additional income. The FADN-based figures do not isolate those pressures one by one, but they offer a standardized accounting snapshot of how specialized vineyard farms performed in 2024 across the European regions covered by the study.