The French Senate has approved a Bill that now gives the country’s wines and vineyards national heritage status according to La Depeche du Midi. The Bill passed recognises that “wine and winemaking areas form a part of the cultural and gastronomic landscape of France”.

The senator for the Aude department, Roland Courteau, was the one who brought the Bill to the Senate and “rejoiced” that wine had been protected by its acceptance.

“It will no longer be presented as a banal alcoholic product,” he said, referring to what some in France see as a mounting attack on wine by the government and health services.

The senator told the French newspaper that: “Henceforth, wine is sheltered from attack and cannot be devalued anymore for future generations. Wine is an expression of a living heritage, it is a part of our cultural and literary heritage but also, equally, that of our gastronomic, architectural, economic and social landscape, and it also provides jobs for hundreds of thousands of people.”