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News
Fighting French
d=”standfirst”>The French are railing against even stricter advertising laws, claiming it could be the beginning of the end for the wine industry. Jon Rees reports
RECENTLY, the French did what the French have traditionally done since the Revolution, they took to the streets and shouted their protests to the reigning authorities, demanding change. Except this time it was not an overweening monarch or British lamb imports they were protesting about: it was restrictions on the advertising of wine.
Restrictions on wine? In France? Some mistake, surely? But not so. La belle Franceis, indeed, no longer full of the joie de vivre; instead, quelle horreur, it is becoming a land where the chink of wine glasses is rarely heard and where wine lovers are fast becoming, not only an endangered species, but are being actively hunted down and destroyed.
Well, that last bit is an exaggeration, though not according to the beleaguered French wine producers who took to the streets recently in order to protest about constraints on advertising wine, effectively claiming such restrictions are an assault on national culture. The demonstrations were held in the heart of Burgundy, where black plastic sheets were draped over the name signs of some of the most famous names in the world of wine – Beaune, Meursault and Pommard – while more than 2,000 vineyard owners from Bordeaux, the Rhone and Loire valleys as well as Provence marched through the Burgundy town of Chalon-sur-Saone. A delegation from France’s wine growing industry met the prime minister, Jean Pierre Raffarin, to press their case to get the government to cut them some slack.
The purpose was to protest about a recent French court ruling that the country’s advertising restrictions on alcohol must be strictly adhered to, by producers of even the finest wines.
The ruling could not have come at a worse time because the industry is facing a collapse in sales, a collapse in wholesale prices and, according to the wine producers at least, an assault on a whole way of life.
And a key part of the problem, again according to the wine producers, lies with advertising. Some of the protestors marching through the villages of France pushed a cart with a model of a scaffold in front of them. Hanging from the noose was a bottle of wine while there was also a placard on which was written, “Whisky, Coke, McDonald’s; No, No, No! Burgundy, Epoisse [a cheese], Snails: Yes, Yes, Yes!” They also carried signs saying, “We are not drug-dealers. We are not killers”.
As well as those restrictions on their ability to advertise their own wares, the wine producers also feel that they are being targeted unfairly by a government-backed campaign against alcoholism and drinkdriving. The court ordered the Interprofessional Office of Burgundy Wines to halt a poster campaign featuring that staple of French advertising, an attractive woman (this time being poured from a wine bottle), with text extolling the benefits of red wine.
Innocuous enough by French standards but the campaign was halted following a case brought by the country’s National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction, which has also launched proceedings to halt another campaign by Bordeaux wine producers carrying the slogan, “Drink less, drink better”. In each case the anti-alcohol campaigners say the advertisements were in clear breach of the 1991 Evinlaw which allows only a minimal amount of information to be conveyed in advertising for alcohol (and tobacco), such as how or where a product is made and what its alcohol content is.
In the golden days of the French wine industry this law was always regarded by foreign alcohol producers as nothing less than a protectionist measure designed to prevent them from reaching French consumers who resolutely bought French products, regardless of advertising, as a matter of course.
Now though, things are different. Wine consumption in France has fallen from a magnificent 26 gallons per person in the 1960s to a mere 15 gallons today. It might be worth noting that French economic output was at its peak in the 1960s, when under de Gaulle it took its place among the front rank of European economies, in fact second only to West Germany in growth, while today is a different story with the French economy in the doldrums.
However, alcohol consumption has fallen as younger people turn to beer, soft drinks or alco-pops, while older people are, belatedly, realising that drinking and driving really do not mix. Road accidents have fallen by 30% in two years, while wine consumption in restaurants is down by 20%. Road deaths are still around 5,700 a year, which is among the highest rates in Europe relative to population size, so wine producers can probably expect no let-up on this issue.
Not that they see it like that. “It is not by attacking wine that you can reduce alcoholism,” said Guillaume Willette of the Burgundy Wine Association. The winemakers turned to advertising themselves to put their case, taking out full-page ads in the French press asking if the only future for wine in France is prohibition. Meanwhile, prices are plummeting, as production outstrips demand; the wholesale price of claret, for example, has fallen by almost a half in the past three years from €1,500 (£1,000) for a 900-litre barrel to €850.
It is the middle-market French wines which have suffered, losing sales abroad to New World wines. The reason is that the French have been out-marketed: consumers who want to spend less than £10 on a bottle of wine and be sure of what they are getting, have turned to the clearly-labelled, standardised New World wines sold by grape variety.
Clearly, the French way, with a myriad appellations (466 protected titles in total) rooting the wine in a particular region or specific locality, is simply no longer working, either abroad or domestically. Not only is the consumer confused by the multiplicity of names, but too many of those wines, say even some French wine dealers, are of too poor a quality. The previous, Socialist-led government suggested producers fight back by abandoning their own labels and pooling their grapes in consistent quality, clearly labelled wines. In other words, take on the Australians et al at their own game. This, though, has been dismissed as anathema by the wine producers.
There has also been a suggestion of setting up a league of premium wines and letting the rest pool their resources under less controlled conditions than at present. Out-marketed by the New World and by their own government, France’s wine makers are now desperate.
Meanwhile, the National Association for Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction shows very little sympathy for the winemakers’ plight, noting only that, “No one is above the law”.