Jon - there are wine makers in the Languedoc who are producing great wine. I’ve been there, I’ve tasted them, and some are wonderful. In fact, the best Carignan I’ve ever had came from a wine maker doing great stuff down there. It would be approximately $100 retail in the US. I told him that great as it was, it would never sell in the US at that price. He shrugged.
All those guys and gals are working hard and nobody is knocking their product. But the fact remains that the region is the source of much generic wine, as is the Central Coast of California and la Mancha in Spain. For many years, when there was not much wine produced elsewhere in the world, the Languedoc producers, or I guess today the producers of the Sud, were putting out generic juice. Today, there are producers all around the world that are doing the same. And people in France aren’t drinking plonk like their fathers did. So as a result, the producers of plonk are suffering.
Mondavi was going to invest. What happened? He got bombed.
Just a few years ago the EU was paying growers to grub up vines. And the growers blocked streets and called on the government to do something. To do what? Mandate that French people drink more swill?
And doesn’t the French government, if not the EU, provide subsidies to some producers because the countryside is part of the French patrimony and it must be preserved and it can’t be preserved if the young people leave?
I grew up in Detroit. In the 1970s the UAW did not allow Japanese cars to park in their parking lot. If you drove a “ricer” on the expressway, you actually could be shot. My girlfriend at the time worked for the French Trade Commission and had a French/American car. We were pulled over every day because the police didn’t recognize the car as being American. The people who dumped the Spanish wine have the same mindset. They can’t believe the world is changing. Someone who is making great wine isn’t going to be hurt by generic wine. But rather than step up their game, they want to prohibit alternatives.
I wont say anything to the contrary, especially because I disagree with the way that wine is being produced, in France or elsewhere. There’s an issue with free trade, though, when the rules aren’t the same on both sides of the border.
Also if there’s fraud, then it’s another story. Spain produces around 36 million hectoliters of wine, and the wine they’ve sent to France in 2015 has risen by about 5 million hectoliters compared to the previous years (figures vary but it’s certainly several millions hectoliters). French winegrowers wonder about the origin of this huge amount of wine that’s suddenly appearing on their home market.
It’s also easy to say “things change, suck it up”, while fogetting about incentives (subsidies, tax breaks and so on) in the past and the fact that there’s not much flexbility when it comes to growing grapes in an extremely rural area like the Aude region.
So I don’t think they’re necessarily right in their approach, but I sure wouldn’t want to be in their shoes, and I sure wouldn’t be so quick to judge.
All of that may be true, but what they’ve done is inexcusable, as is the police’s failure to act on it. “I don’t think they’re necessarily right” seems to leave the door open for them maybe being right, which is ridiculous. To make excuses for these people is to justify actions that are not justifiable. I wonder how people would react if a bunch of US rednecks started blowing up Walmarts because they destroy local businesses.
Margarita Lozano is a professor, enologist and writes for Granada Hoy and gives another take on this infuriating story. The wine dumped by the French wine terrorists was not destined for the French bars as was claimed by the French who opened the valves, but it was destined for Austria. This is verified on the export documents that every shipment out of Spain legally has to provide.
Great points. We had a lovely Costieres de Nimes last night and I can’t believe how modest the price was for the quality. Some of these ‘country wines’ are very impressive.
First of all, I agree with Nola. The activists got carried away and attacked trucks that were bound for other European countries carrying wine that may well have been more expensive than their own. As I said, I don’t condone their actions and am embarrassed that the president of the syndicat to whom I have to pay my contributions was involved.
However, France does not provide subsidies to viticulture on a regular per-hectare basis, which Spain does. France devotes its share of the budget to subsidising marketing, vineyard and winery improvements and other initiatives like wine-tourism. Yes it encourages young farmers by giving them tax-breaks and other subsidies but the key difference is that it doesn’t subsidise the production of wine below cost. 30-40€ a hectolitre is below cost.
Thirdly, thankyou gentlemen for praising our “country wines”. I likewise have found some New World attempts to copy French wines quite commendable too.
Exactly what I got from reading the comments section…sad that you have to wade through the bullshit to get to the real story but such is the nature of news these days. The comments from the TXAggie make me sad to be from Texas , and of French ancestry , but there are a lot of morons here as evidenced by simply getting on the local freeways.
I read a book on champagne recently and it mentioned French farmers doing this on more than one occasion pre 1950. Also noted French winemakers didn’t have a problem using Spanish grapes and selling them as French wine when it was in their best interest.
