Violence in the French vineyards

Press, 20 August 1981, Page 13

Violence in the French vineyards

By

ROBIN SMYTH,

“Observer,” London

The most thankless job in France today is driving a truckload of Italian wine out of the Mediterranean port of Sete.

Along the roads through the scorched vineyards of Languedoc angry winegrowers lie in wait like bandits in a Western movie. Drivers who fall into an ambush watch helplessly as hundreds of litres of imported wine are smashed in the ditch.

If the driver tries to protect his cargo his truck may be set on fire. The resentment in the Languedoc vineyards, where the crop is mainly of poor quality and low alcohol content. threatens to reach boiling point at the end of this month when it could face the Socialist Government with its first social crisis. If Italian wine continues to flow into France in large quantities to give the Languedoc growers What they see as unfair competition, they threaten to block the autoroutes as returning holidaymakers move northwards in a tidal wave of cars and caravans at the end of August. Rough justice of a similar though more sporadic kind is being exercised by southern fruit-growers against trucks carrying Spanish pears to French markets. In Madrid, the Foreign Ministry has called in the French Ambassador for a strong protest and Spanish fruit farmers are threatening reprisals against French exports.

The unrest in France’s deep south presents a formidable challenge to President Mitterrand’s dynamic, young, Minister of Agriculture, Edith Cresson. The wine and fruit-grow-ing areas voted overwhelmingly for the. Left in the elections which have brought Mitterrand and the Socialists to power. Promises were held out to the families who squeeze a living from the vineyards that the socialists could solve their problems.

Now the Socialists find themselves faced with expectations pitched embarrassingly high, with no real solution in sight except patient structural reorganisation. The Languedoc are burdened with two massive disadvantages. Their wines are 20 per cent more expensive than those of their Italian rivals; Languedoc wine rarely rises above 11 degrees alcohol content, but the clients of the cheap table wine merchants demand 12

or 13 degrees which is what the fiery Italian wines provide. So the merchants of Sete are forced at least to mix in some Italian with their weaker Languedoc and are tempted to sell straight Italian. -i '

This year, there has been a steep rise in the number of Italian wine tanker ships docking at Sete to siphon off their cargoes. French growers charge that the Italians are handsomely subsidised by their Government in defiance of Common Market rules and that their wine is artificially boosted with illegal additives. The French also complain that the prices of their own wine have not kept pace with steeply-rising costs, and they are losing money. ' Edith Cresson’s margin for manoeuvre is narrow. The impulse to protect and subsidise the home product is held in check by Common Market regulations and by the fear of retaliation against French exports. So far she has won an assurance from the merchants that they will voluntarily rein in their sale of imported wine until the end of the month. She has carried out a successful operation of charm and persuasion by inviting the leaders of the growers to Paris for a personal discussion of their difficulties. In the Northern Hemisphere autumn, the Minister will have a hard task to win from her Common Market colleagues the kind of measures which could give new hope to the south. Any coherent long-term plan for Languedoc will have to include the destruction of some of the vines and their replacement by a more profitable crop?

Subsidies will be needed to increase the proportion of the annual harvest which' is distilled into pure alcohol. The culture of the vines on the more profitable slopes must be reorganised to cut costs and raise quality. In the meantime, the Socialists fear that they will lose vital support in the south to both the Right and the Communists. Rightwingers press for more sweeping protective measures and the Communists advertise their rejection of Common Market membership for Spain, where a hotter sun produces, earlier, riper, and — the French growers insist — inferior fruit at a much lower price. Copyright, London Observer Service.