CRAV mob attacks French wine co-op

Masked members of the militant Comité Regionale d’Action Viticole (CRAV) have smashed the windows of a French wine co-operative and set its offices alight in a violent attack.

Photo credit: France 3 TV – CRAV militants smash up administrative offices of Vinadeis

According to reports in the French media, around 30 members of the notorious group attacked the offices of Sudvin, a subsidiary of the Vinadeis wine cooperative in Maureilhan near the city of Béziers, just before midnight on 19 June.

The group destroyed furniture, left burning tyres in offices and attempted to drain wine tanks. Luckily for the winery, they were already empty.

The quasi-terrorist group, made up of anonymous vignerons from the Languedoc-Roussillon, periodically surfaces to attack winery buildings and winemakers in the past, protesting the impact of gloablisation on the country’s wine industry.

In a video aired by TV station France 3 a masked member of the group complained that local winemakers’ vats are full of unsold wine when they should be empty as harvest approaches, blaming wine being imported from other countries at cheaper rates.

“Tonight there are many of us, but tomorrow there will be even more, because we have decided to live with the pride of our trade,” said the man.

Active since the 1970s, the group occasionally makes the news claiming responsibility for a number of acts of vandalism, arson and bombings and the 2013 bombing of the Socialist party’s headquarters in Carcassonne.

In 2014 the group appeared to claim responsibility for an arson attack on two telephone exchanges which left thousands without communications in the Haute-Garonne near Toulouse.

The same year a winemaker was tied up, gagged and threatened by masked men in the Languedoc, who claimed to be members of CRAV. The incident was said to have been sparked by an agreement the winemaker made to sell his vineyard to Swiss buyers, with the group believing French land should remain in French hands.