FRENCH WINE TRADE

Evening Star, Issue 17923, 20 March 1922, Page 4

FRENCH WINE TRADE

A. DIMINISHING INDUSTRY. TARIFF PRESSURE TELLS. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, March 18. (Received March 20, at 8.5 a.m.) National Wine Week is being held in Paris, and a conference of growers, merchants, and shippers is sitting. The primary object is to ro-cstablish tho prosperity of tho wino trade. Forty years ago 6,000,000 acres in Franco were under vine cultivation, and they yielded about 1,825,000,000 gallons of wino a year. Now the acreage is 1,000,000, and the output is 1,000,000,000 gallons. M. Uervais, of tho Academy of Agriculture, states that tho salo of wines has diminished by 50 per cent, during tho last fifty wars. Ho attributes this to increased duties abroad, which are prohibitive for ordinary wines. Ho points out that tho present English duties represent a tax of 17 per cent, on lino Bordeaux wine, of 35 per cent, on vin ordinaire, and of 118 per cent, on the cheapest wines. M. Gorvaiii advocates a general revision of tariffs from a .proportional point of view. Tho French conference decided upon a propaganda in allied and neutral countries in favor of French wines. It was declared that tho French people would regard the prohibition of the importation of wine as a declaration of economic war. One of ( the measures suggested is an agreement between Franco and other countries exporting wines and spirits for mutual tariff concessions.—A. and N.Z. Cable.