Final Call to Save Wine from Drowning !
"They" wrote it, the most mercenary provided the pen and ink, liberal theoreticians whispered the arguments, professional representatives thought they saw in it the missing tool to make European wine competitive, and Brussels added the final touch by putting down on paper the idea of dissolving the cultural specificities of Wine.
What is it ? Nothing less than making it legal to "tinker with" our wines to make them comply with a consumption standard imagined by the marketing specialists of the major international alcoholic beverage companies. We could flavour wine, remove alcohol from it, add glycerol to it, ferment in Europe concentrated Argentinean must, or even import grape juice to produce Swedish "wine" ! We could also mix continents and make poverty compete with itself to take advantage of the exploitation of labourers in new producer countries and have cheaper wine on our supermarket shelves.
The villages, lands, countrysides, history, culture, men and women of the vineyards, accumulated knowledge, locally domesticated or created varieties of vine, the shared surprise of new vintages, the subtle distinctions in handiwork or origin, the tasty popular "petit vin", the handsome Cinsault du Minervois, the teasing Fié Gris of Touraine or Saint Bris, the virile Chenin Sec, the seductive Grenache from the Rhone Valley, the distinguished Pinot Noir of Burgundy, the thousand and one vines of France, the five thousand varieties around the world-all this wealth to be pushed aside to make room for uniformity and reproducibility.
Economic dictatorship has bad taste: it wants to kill Wine at birth with intensive farming methods and chemical elaboration techniques. It wants to erase the farmer from Wine's memory so as to clear the field for a product defined by agrifood standards.
We are in a critical situation : the alliance between big trade and anti-wine lobbies is - with the blessing of the European Union - destroying Wine's unique, small-farm character. It is working to break down Wine's cultural legitimacy in order to prepare the ground for a vast global alcoholic beverage market that will profit only a few multinational firms. It is neglecting the human and social aspects, sacrificing vineyard jobs and the dynamism of the territories that they feed.
Are we going to watch, powerless, as Wine dies and as they create soulless alcoholic beverages that only serve a market-oriented object ?
Wine belongs to the most ancient of alchemy: the transformation of the mineral into sensation; the hard labour of generations of men and women that built landscapes, customs and symbols; the cration of connection, joy, and shared pleasure.
This is why...
WE OPPOSE a draft reform that ignores the cultural, social, economic and environmental dimensions of vine growing and condemns Wine to insignificance !
WE SUPPORT a reform that applies the principle of cultural exception to Wine and ensures a future for small vine growing !
WE CALL for a vast public debate on the future of European vine growing and vine growers.