More than a million dollars of damage and the hospitalisation of five police were the most tangible results from a winegrower’s riot at Nimes in the southern French region of Languedoc-Roussillon. More than 8,000 growers were demonstrating over a recent 30% decline in the price of domestic Vin de Pays and Vin de table wines. The damage included toll booths on a nearby motorway and the torching of at least two cars. The cellars of a local negociant who sells imported wines were ransacked by masked thugs and his wine stocks destroyed. The reduction in prices of cheaper French wines is the direct result of an increasing over-supply of such stocks as the domestic market shrinks, as France imports more attractive alternatives from the New World and as France exports less of these frankly ordinary wines. Now that the US is finally self-sufficient, France has a major problem if it wishes to maintain the status quo in some of its lesser, but larger wine regions. The rioting winegrowers of Languedoc-Roussillon want a once-off subsidy to distil 25% of their region’s production to reduce supply. They’re hardly likely to get it, but one thing Australia won’t expect is a lenient approach from France in EU trade negotiations.
