Wine activists strike again in France

Two militant French wine groups struck again in southern France last week, emptying tankers carrying thousands of litres of Spanish wine.

Tensions have been running high among winemakers, who say Spanish bulk wines are diluting the French market. 

Jeunes Agriculteurs members from the Gard region circled tanker trucks at a toll booth last Tuesday, demanding to see the drivers' bills of lading.

When one driver was found to have picked up Spanish wine in the port town of Sète, with orders to deliver it to Saone et Loire to be used for the production of flavoured wine, activists emptied the tanker on the spot.

In a separate incident a few hours earlier, Comité d’Action Viticole (CAV) emptied a tank truck carrying Spanish wine while it was parked at a shopping centre in Narbonne and spray-painted the initials "CAV" on the truck. They also blocked a depot used by Prodis, the wine subsidiary of Carrefour supermarket, in Grizan near Nîmes. The site is used to produce cask wine.

"These Spanish imports prevent us from selling our French products,’ Anaïs Amalric, co-president of Jeunes Agriculteurs du Gard, told Decanter.

"Our tanks are full, prices are falling and wine merchants are asking us to lower prices. This is unacceptable."

Last year, angry French vintners emptied five tankers of Spanish wine.

In August, five vats of red wine were emptied from a wine merchant's premises in Sete, near Montpellier. The wine was ankle deep along the avenue Maréchal-Juin and firefighters had to be called to tackle the mess. CAV claimed responsibility for the sabotage.

A month prior, CAV set fire to a wine company's offices near Béziers in Languedoc. They stormed the offices breaking windows, cabinets, furniture and
The shadowy group of vignerons is known for using violence and extreme tactics to pursue its goal of protecting the Languedoc wine region. It has previously dynamited government buildings and supermarkets.

Violence also erupted in the region in April, when a group of 150 winemakers hijacked five tanker trucks carrying 90,000 bottles of Spanish wine and emptied the tanks on the road.