French winemakers seek cure for sales hangover

Thousands of winemakers took to the streets of France yesterday, marching behind large farm machinery and tractors in protest against falling wine exports and slumping sales at home.

Calling for government compensation for their loss in revenues, angry winegrowers in the southern city of Avignon rallied behind a picking machine draped in black. "They want the winegrowers' death," a sign on the machine read.

In Macon, in the eastern region where Burgundy and Beaujolais wines are made, some 2,500 wine producers protested with tractors. They chanted slogans, "The government's toasting, winegrowers are sinking" and "Stop the lies".

The wine sector - a pillar of French life that provides 75,000 jobs - has been hit by factors such as France's row with Washington over the Iraq war and the rise in the euro against the dollar, which makes French products more expensive abroad.

With Italy, France remains the world's top wine maker, producing some €7.3 billion worth of wine last year and making up about a fifth of the world's wine production in 2001, the latest year for which data is available.

Australia in comparison made up some four per cent of world wine output in 2001, and Argentina around six per cent. But the share of such New World countries' tipples has risen in past years.

But France saw the volume of its wine exports fall by 5.4 per cent in the first nine months of this year.

The protesting winegrowers also blame the conservative government's health campaign and a drive against drink-driving for a slump in sales at home. Producers put consumption at 58 litres per head in 2002 against 100 litres in the early 1960s.

"We don't accept wine being vilified," said Gilles Veve from the FNSEA association in the Vaucluse area, which represents producers of such wines as Cotes-du-Rhone and Corbieres.

"Wine has become associated with cancer and is being treated as a poison. That's disastrous for winegrowers," he said, adding some 7,000 producers were protesting in Avignon yesterday.