French Vinters Threaten Violence

A shadowy group of wine activists has issued a one-month ultimatum to Nicolas Sarkozy threatening “action” if the new French President fails to help the industry.

The Regional Committee for Viticultural Action (CRAV) has been known to hijack tankers of foreign wine and dynamite government buildings or supermarkets.

In a pre-recorded message delivered to France 3, a regional television channel, from “somewhere in the Languedoc hinterland”, five balaclava-clad men read out a statement addressed to Sarkozy.

Looking more like Corsican nationalists or masked Islamic fundamentalists than winemakers, the “wine terrorists” vowed that if nothing changed and the price they received for their wine had not gone up, they would go “into action”.

In a reference to the French resistance in World War II, the CRAV said it would “come out of the maquis (scrub) and go into action”.

Calling on fellow winemakers to unite, the activists referred to the 1907 winemakers’ uprising in Montpellier, when thousands took to the streets and the army opened fire, killing six.

The French wine industry has been under attack from high quality and lower cost locales ranging from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and even the United States for years. The French wine industry has been incredibly slow to respond to the changes, and the locals are getting restless. France's share of the worldwide wine market has slipped, and that has translated into bad blood at home.

This group is threatening terrorism and all that it entails. Things have the potential to get quite bloody.

I was in Paris this past March and you would be hard pressed to find any non-French wines in most restaurants, let alone the wine shops that dot the city. Are the French that threatened by foreign imports of wine that they'd threaten to blow up the shipments? This seems to be more about retaining the status quo than adapting to new realities of the marketplace.

The group that is apparently behind these threats comes from a region where the supply outstrips the demand considerably. The French have repeatedly resorted to taking the excess wine and distilling it into alcohol, rather than pouring it down the drain. There simply isn't the kind of demand for the French wines that there once was because other regions around the world are producing high quality wines.

It's yet another mess that Sarkozy has to deal with.

Via Samizdata