Red Wine And The Destruction Of Old Farm Cultures

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The home of dark red wines, Languedoc-Roussillon, is suffering from both cultural change of tastes and free trade causing home markets to fall in price. This, in turn, is triggering political agitation leading to even open terrorism. French farmers have a long history of political unrest and revolts some of them very famous indeed. The election trumpetted by the media across the globe which pushed exclusively on behalf of the right wing candidate ended up not being the big victory they hoped to create. Instead, the country is going anti-international with a leader whose family is recent immigrants who exploited French fears of alien revolts. But the new government now has to deal with a nativist revolt brewing in the south.

From the Guardian, UK:

Except this was not an ultimatum from al-Qaeda but from a group of radical wine growers in the south of France. In a tape sent anonymously to French TV a month ago, the shadowy militant organisation known as CRAV (Comité Régional d'Action Viticole or regional winegrowers' action committee) threatened violent action if new President Nicolas Sarkozy did not take measures to help economically desperate wine growers in the France's vast Languedoc-Roussillon area.

This news perked up my ears. My first encounter with wines, aside from the sip of cheap wines at communion, was when I was a student in Europe in 1968. I started off on light Rhein wein and worked my way up to the deep red wines of southern France. It took a while to get used to the strong flavor and sharper palate but over the years, I learned to like it and now prefer dark wines and deep purple grapes.

Just the other day, I did a small tractor chore for a neighbor. She rummaged around her house and ran outside with a bottle of very dark French wine and I happily hoisted it into the seat and drove home. This is a wine you drink while eating something hearty. Snails and fresh bread with garlic butter...yummy.

Once, in Montreal, I went out to dine and despite my obvious (ridiculous) American a'ccent, I ordered that simple combo and requested the maître d' show me some of the stronger red wines, he was estatic and changed from being distant and uninterested into happily showing me and letting me sample a variety of wines. One of my nieces discovered, when she was dating a rock star from Lyons, if she asked for the darker wines of Provance, she would be instantly embraced by everyone.

But in general, wines are blushing ever lighter. The white wines are easier with various foods and dominate most dining in the evening. The mid-range wines are increasingly popular and all this is at the expense of the richer, denser wines from France. In addition, thanks to free trade, wines churned out by other countries are now flooding France itself. Thus, the anger of French winemakers.

From the BBC:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right party won a comfortable majority in parliamentary elections.
But his UMP party fell far short of the landslide win predicted for it in the second-round vote, with the Socialist opposition faring better than expected.

The UMP won 314 seats in the 577-member assembly, while the Socialists won 185. Voter turnout was low, at about 60%.

The mass media has spent a lot of energy trying to convince everyone that this election was going to be a giant victory for free trade and France will embrace the USA because of what? We are going to buy their red wines? Please.

The anticipated victory barely eked through.

The UMP and its allies' 314-seat majority is smaller than the 359 seats they held in the previous parliament, when Jacques Chirac was president.

The Socialists and their allies won 185 seats, up from 149 in the previous assembly.

It looks more like both parties will end up yo-yoing back and forth while all the minor parties will be eaten up. The question of free trade will be very much an issue here and the despair of the southern regions can cook into something interesting for this region has been not only wracked by destruction but also is the breeding ground of revolutionaries and leaders as well as being culturally and in other ways, connected with Corsica and the Pyrenees mountain folks. Normally, right wing candidates are supported by these regional farmers but this is probably why they are taking this novel and dangerous step to give warning to the new President who troubles them due to his uncertain past.

From Wikipedia:

The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade (1209 - 1229) was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the heresy of the Cathars of Languedoc.

When Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism met with little success, he declared a crusade against Languedoc, offering the lands of the schismatics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms. The violence, extreme even by medieval standards, led to France's acquiring of lands with closer cultural and linguistic ties to Catalonia (see Occitan).

The Albigensian Crusade also had a role in the creation and institutionalization of both the Dominican Order and the Medieval Inquisition.

The Troubadors of Medieval lore came first from this same wine-growing region. Queen Eleanor, mother of Richard the Lionhearted, ruled this land and after her death, it was ripped to shreds and the culture suppressed. Despite the ruination that has swept this rich land, the vines are replanted and the culture struggles back to life. Provincial style was looked down upon by the aesthetes of Paris but it enjoys even today, great popularity for its comfort and unpretensious style. It is the crossroads between the ocean culture of the Mediterranean, Spanish tastes and the dominance of Italy. This makes it a popular vacation spot.

Languedoc.com Vintiers:

Vins & Terroirs du Languedoc head office settled in Carcassonne a world wide known medieval city in the heart of the Languedoc Roussillon vineyard. Such a situation makes it possible to follow up production and more particularly our own producers through out the year.

Languedoc Roussillon is one of the most important wine growing area in the world where the production of quality wines is increasing in Vins de Pays d'Oc as well as A.O.C wines. Vins & Terroirs du Languedoc is specialized only in wines produced by this vineyard which enables us to focus our attention on grape growing and production :

We help and give our wine farmers technical advice.

We keep looking for new wines in order to meet with the needs of the market.

Many outsiders, charmed by this lovely region, are stepping in and trying to change things. Of course, this doesn't please the natives who, like many people who live in long-settled regions, resents this sort of interference. I remember meeting families in Germany that lived in the same house for 600 years or more! And still did nearly everything on their farms they did for much of that time! One family showed me a 'modern' toilet installed in 1845! Wow!

Outsiders can't understand this sort of hyper-conservativism but I now think I see their good reasoning: the old ways worked. They preserved the land and kept things going. They require minimum intervention and stress since everything has basically evolved together, as a unit, as an organic whole. So what seems like simple changes often bring a host of difficulties one can't see until it is too late. The natural feeling is one of suspicion even if things seem better in the short run.

Unfortunately for the people of this region of the world, their proud past is cutting their ability to sell and survive in today's markets. I used to raise exotic sheep who evolved for cold, mountainous climates with lots of snow. They had wonderful wool, perfect for weaving waterproof garments, for example. The wool was very kinky. Suddenly, the wool market was flooded with all sorts of other kinds of wool and my own market got submerged and I had to give up my flock!

These changes are sweeping the farming world and unlike the mega-farms and vinyards of say, California, in the mountains, one can only have small farmholds. And this is true of France whose farms have been a historic patchwork-quilt of odd and ends assembled by marriage, death and how many sons divided an estate. This sort of farming can be good for nature and evolution because it prevents monoculture farming. And many of the 'successes' of modern farming has really been the reckless rapine of nature, polluting the soil, water and killing off much of the wildlife.

I used to hunt mushrooms in Europe and then cook them in butter which I got from some nearby farm and the variety of cows was a joy to explore which is why I got Brown Swiss when I moved here (both have died, alas). Walking through the Alps, I foraged for various cheeses and butters and used them on the breads each farmer sold me or often, simply gave to me since I was interested in the cows, the horses and all the farming techniques. I learned a great deal from that distant journey and have applied them to my own farm here in America.

But all my ventures fail financially due to dropping prices and competition from the strange fruits of modern farm technology. I still hunt mushrooms here and eat them on bread I bake and I will buy French wine for this one-two-three combo. But modern life seems bent on eliminating these simple yet complex pleasures.

From Wine Business.com:

Chuck: If you are going to deal in low end wines and you are that kind of distributor, you go for the cheaper price. The wines coming in from Australia now are absolutely rock bottom. I don't know how they can ship them in here at that price and still have everyone make a profit on it. I don't think California land prices will ever allow us to compete with those types of wines.

Angelo: In our case, we are going to do all we can to produce grapes of quality and stay out of that lower price range. Economically, it's the only way we can continue to exist.

Walter: Our land is too expensive. Our production costs and unit costs are too high. You're not going to change those kinds of costs. It's just not possible to try to compete at certain low price levels. Even in the Central Valley, if people discover that their grapes are no longer in demand at a certain price, they are going to rip them out and plant something else. We can't afford to do that up here.

Most winemakers in France are accustomed to simply producing wine like their ancestors and they assume people would happily drink it. But this is blasted away by the flood of wines from Australia and guess who killed my flock of sheep?

Australia flooding the markets with excess wool that the government was trying to unload due to the high cost of storing all this. Countries trying to unload excess farm products are undercutting each other and this is the deep, dark nasty mess that is pushing farmers across the earth to revolt. Korean farmers have irritated the ruling elites at the Doha round meetings, committing ritual suicide in the streets outside. Elsewhere, farmers riot when they learn the terms of new trade agreements. And thanks to all this, the Amazon is being leveled as desperate farmers there try to grow beef and soybeans for export. And the price of cattle here continues to drop even as the price of corn for fattening them soars as we try to use this for making gasoline.

From Chemin des Vins:

First, Patrick is deeply involved in winemaking in several different regions of France. For a winemaker, and particularly a French winemaker, this is highly unusual. Patrick's broad experience gives him a wider perspective on wine and winemaking, as well as the freedom to experiment and take risks to produce superior wine.

Second, Patrick's activities should be seen in the global context of the dramatic changes in viticulture and élevage (grape growing and wine making) of the last 10 years. Responding to the challenges of intense competition from winemakers in California, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the historically dominant European producers have made significant efforts to improve the quality of their products. In France, with its ancient, venerable estates and long traditions of wine making, these changes have been associated with the arrival of a new generation of winemakers (often sons of illustrious fathers) willing to invest, to take risks and to dare to make great wines. Patrick has been in the vanguard of this movement to return to organic agriculture and natural, non-interventionist winemaking.

Third, Patrick owns no vineyards. Typically, a producer not owning vineyards has been seen as a negative, showing a potential lack of consistency. Patrick, conversely, believes it to be an advantage since he is less tied down to the production of any one set of vineyards which may have suffered from disastrous weather or disease in a particular vintage. Instead, he has the freedom and flexibility to shift production to other estates or even other regions where it may be possible to produce superior wines in a given year.

The brokers are moving in and rearranging the natural movement of business and this is not an slight change, the changes will ripple down through the systems until it totally undoes 3,000 years of evolution of wine growing and the winemaking culture and ethos will vanish. The culture of farming all over the planet is under attack from these same forces. Small farms in England are being turned into Midwestern-style farms and the destruction of the farm ecology there has taken a huge toll on butterflies, moths, field rodents, foxes and many kinds of flowers, hedges and trees. The American Midwest has been ruined in a similar fashion. Chinese farming is very ancient and very intense as well as successful and it is being hammered now by many forces including over-farming the land.

This fight will increase and I see no end to it. I hate to see thousands of years of agricultural culture die. This is a very important struggle and I am on the side of the traditionalists here.

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Comments

[Old Ari]

On the other hand, Louis Pasteur, has ruined milk.

[JSmith]

From the Guardian article:

"Experts warn against taking the group [CRAV] too lightly. 'They are influenced by Corsican and Basque separatists, both of whom have ruined many lives and caused major economic disruption,' said one senior French police source."

The Basques WILL blow stuff up. And the Corsicans? Yeesh.

"Languedoc-Rousillon, one of the biggest single wine-producing areas in the world with more than half a million acres devoted to vines, produces some good bottles, but huge quantities of vin de table."

That's happened elsewhere. Once upon a long time ago, a region in Italy called the Soave produce some good dry whites. But in the late 60s the Italian government expanded the area that could be called "Soave" and a lot of places started producing really bad dry whites. By the time I was in college (mid-70s), Soave was basically dorm wine.

[teddy]

Hilary,like all the other presidential candidates, is parading around Iowa promoting the bogus ethanol subsidies. Can't Sarkozy concoct some plan to just buy up all the surplus French wine to use as an alternative energy source to appease the farmers?

[JSmith]

French politicians do little else BUT appease the damn farmers. If they don't... the farmers all drive their tractors to Paris, immolate some sheep, and make of themselves an enormous pain in the ass.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Winemobiles! YES! And complainers can run Whinemobiles.

[jackee]

Red Wine And The Destruction Of Old Farm Cultures nice article yes the most of wines came from australia and its cheap here who care how much they gain just one thing its cheap afordable ,tasty and enjoyable

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