Posted on 02/12/2006 5:10:12 PM PST by wagglebee
Eliette Montosson surveyed the rolling vineyard where her family has produced its Pays d'Oc wine for as far back as anyone can remember.
"It's bad, very very bad. The situation is desperate," said the silver-haired 68-year-old, who tends the rows of gnarled vines for 10 hours each day. "We've had some of these vines for 20 years but now they've got to go."
On Wednesday Mrs Montosson and thousands of other winemakers will take to the streets of southern France to highlight a crisis they claim is driving them into crippling debt - and, in some tragic cases, suicide.
In a grim echo of the way some British farmers took their own lives in despair at the outbreaks of BSE and foot-and-mouth disease, at least four vintners are reported to have committed suicide in the Languedoc Roussillon last year, while another two attempted it.
All the incidents took place between October and December, as despair mounted over a crisis that has cast doubt over Languedoc's future as the world's largest wine producing region.
It is, growers say, the worst crisis to hit France's wine industry since 1907, when phylloxera ravaged the country's vineyards.
Riot police will be on standby this week for clashes, expected to involve up to 16,000 winemakers. Many of the demonstrators feel they have nothing to lose, since up to half of them are expected to go to the wall in the next five years unless the French government - or the Europe Union - bails them out.
Critics say French wine producers have brought the crisis on themselves by arrogantly overproducing wines of indifferent quality that do not sell.
Last year Mrs Montosson did not sell a single drop from her 50-acre vineyard for eight months because she refused the price offered by her agent. "He offered me only half of what I'd got for my wine the year before," she said. "I said it was too low and refused to sell. But afterwards the prices just fell lower and lower."
Mrs Montosson, who lives outside Narbonne, is waiting to see what the agent comes up with this year. "We cannot afford to say 'no' again this time."
Tensions have been mounting in the region, where last year there were violent demonstrations and acts of "wine terrorism". In April protesters hijacked a tanker carrying 30,000 litres of Spanish wine, and in November masked members of the militant group the Regional Winemakers' Action Committee stormed a winery in the port of Sète and smashed open vats containing 730,000 litres.
In some areas up to a third of wine-growers are in severe financial difficulties, according to the agro-economic magazine Agra Presse. Because of France's privacy laws, the suicides among producers have gone largely unreported.
Wine union chiefs said the victims' distraught families had not gone public even though it would highlight the crisis.
The crisis has spread beyond cheap table wines, with a collapse in prices for top-quality Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) vintages too. Last year, for the first time, about 200 million bottles of AOC were distilled into ethanol, the industrial alcohol, under an EU scheme to keep them off the market and maintain prices.
While the pay-outs helped to keep some vintners afloat, many felt dispirited at seeing their quality products going to waste. The discontent has also led to infighting between different wine-growing regions.
Last month Languedoc winemakers accused their compatriots in Bordeaux of "twirling their moustaches" while southern producers suffered the brunt of the crisis.
The agriculture minister, Dominique Bussereau, has announced an emergency plan to "guarantee the future of French wine". Like other French farmers, the vintners want more state hand-outs rather than fundamental reform. Mr Bussereau gave vintners a €140 million (£96 million) aid package last year but Pascal Frissant, of the union Confédération Paysanne, said there was a need for tax breaks, increased state aid to promote French wine abroad and yet more EU money to distil excess wine.
As part of a compensation scheme in which vintners are ripping up two per cent of France's vines, Mrs Montosson will soon be removing seven of her precious acres in return for €18,000.
"It's sad but the wine they make is not so good. We're keeping our best vines, the Merlot," she said. "All we want to do is sell the wine we've made on our land."
Wine ping?
Buy more California wine PING!
Restaurants in the Philadelphia area that I frequent stopped carrying French wine. It wasn't that most of the owners were so angry with the French, it was that the wines just were not selling.
Muleteam1
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Heh, heh, heh...
Down heah in "Bama, we ain't bought nuttin french in a long whiles.
I'm still very fond of French wine. But I'm not going to buy it.
Supply and demand, what a concept!
I can buy a better wine from California at half the price. I'd be the first to admit, though, that the real problem is that they've inflated the euro. If their central planners weren't so determined to have a "strong" currency, at any expense, they'd probably be in fine shape economically.
The French have a lot of problems with wine recently. The French are drinking a lot less themselves, more imports are coming in and they have some big competition worldwide.
Lot of little wineries are probably going to go out of business.
Of course, France could have helped the situation by standing beside the US, in our time of need.
Perhaps the owners weren't angry at the French, but who is to say how the clientele felt?
the infowarrior
Did anyone else laugh as they envisioned a french wine militant group (as if this isn't funny enough) attacking vats of wine? I'll bet the militants actually retreated a couple of times before one person went and threw a hunk of cheese in a vat.
Wait, make that "Islam peace-bomb" factories.
Here is a good part of your problem, Madam.
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