FRANCE'S WINE INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13456, 5 June 1907, Page 7

FRANCE'S WINE INDUSTRY.

A POLITICAL DEMONSTRA-

TION.

By Telegraph.—Press Aasoeiation.— Paris, Juno 3. , Two hundred thousand persons; participated in an anti-Government demonstration at Nimes yesterday, the centre of a wine and brandy manufacturing district in the south-east of Franco. •■'■'• , *

The cause of the protest was the new Ministerial Bill, which prohibits the use of sugar to enable wine of lower alcoholic strength to compete with the stronger wine produced in the south of France, but does not touch adulteration from watering, blending, or chemical treatment.

I To allay distress and political unrest in the south of Franco the Government has introduced a measure that appears to have roused the south-east against it. Jn May it was reported that there was great distress in the vineyard districts in the south of Franco. The people had broken out in rioting, and at Bczicrs they had set fire to the Town Hall. The ; reason given for the popular outbreak was depression in the wine industry owing to overplanting and to the practice in other parts of France of adulterating the wines. The Government, ay)» parently to remove the complaint as to adulteration, has brought in its Bill, which; is being opposed in tno districts in which the practices objected to are adopted.,