(Wine-Searcher) - Exchange program aims to make winemaking an attractive career to Rhône teenagers.

Rhône Valley winemakers and their American Rhône Ranger counterparts are setting up a program next year to sponsor the sons and daughters of smaller wine producers on visits to American and Australian wine schools.

Michel Chapoutier, the president of Inter Rhône, the region's wine council, has long believed the future of the Rhône depends on young people learning about other winemaking cultures in order to combat what he calls the "first French defect" – chauvinism.

The idea is to send 14 and 15 year olds to other wine-producing countries "to make them comfortable with English", he told Wine Searcher. "My goal is that in 10 years every Rhône winemaker will speak English. If we show them wine in another place – if we fight against the biggest French defect, which is chauvinism, it will open their minds."

He mentioned University of California Davis as one school they would look to partner with, stressing that the plan was still in the very early stages.

Speaking at the closing press conference of the annual Decouvertes en Vallée du Rhône (Discover the Rhône Valley) event, he told journalists: "We have to make winemaking attractive to a new generation."

The majority of winegrowers in the Rhône Valley are small businesses supplying co-operatives, and their day-to-day work is often viewed by their children as thankless and unattractive. "The first bad thing is when they see their parents suffering through the wine depression and thinking, 'that's a terrible job – I don't want to do that'," Chapoutier said. "We have to show them how winemaking can be a successful business."

Putting flesh on this idea, representatives of Inter Rhône met this week with their U.S. counterparts the Rhône Rangers, the organization dedicated to promoting American-made Rhône varietal wines, which has some 160 member wineries.

"We discussed how costings would work," Inter Rhône spokeswoman Laure Vaissermann told Wine Searcher. "This is now a concrete plan which will be budgeted for 2016."

Chapoutier made clear that grants and sponsorship would made available only to smaller producers with estates of around three hectares (7.5 acres) or less, "who don't have the money to send their children abroad".