The Grapes of Wrath

In France last week, from the choice vineyards of Burgundy to the rich plains of Bordeaux, French wine experts studied the grapes and searched the sky. If the dry weather held, it would be another tres grande annee (very great year) for wine. The Ministry of Agriculture reported that the yield might run as high as 1.5 billion gals, in France alone, plus another 450 million gals, from Algeria. But as they began harvesting the grapes, few growers were happy. The trouble: France already has more wine than it can drink or export.

Said Paris' Franc-Tiretir: "No one is really an enemy of wine--in France--but it is hard to ask Frenchmen to drink more than their bellyful for the sole purpose of draining off the harvest surplus." Frenchmen, already the world's biggest consumers of alcoholic beverages (seven gals, per person per year, on a pure alcohol basis, v. one gal. per American), drank about 1.2 billion gals, of wine last year, 75% of what they put away in prewar years. Yet wine production was about the same as before the war (1.9 billion gals.), almost a third of the world's output.

5,000,000 Frenchmen. The crux of France's wine problem is overproduction of poor, low-priced grades. Almost half of France's home-wine crop comes from le Midi mediterraneen, roughly the region between Marseille and the Pyrenees. It is cheap, tart wine, and much of it is mixed with Algerian wine and sold as vin rouge, which must be consumed quickly, or it will turn sour.

Frenchmen, of course, prefer the better wines, but they are far too expensive. So the French consume less table wine than they used to, and the government supports prices by buying up low-grade wines to convert into industrial alcohol. Nevertheless, the problem of surpluses gets worse. Wine is the backbone of the French economy. As the country's biggest business, employing 5,000,000, it brings in more government revenue than any other industry: 70 billion francs a year ($200 million).

50,000 Winegrowers. Two months ago. faced with a huge deficit, the government announced that it would cut down on its price-support purchases for alcohol. As a result, 50,000 Midi winegrowers struck and stopped shipping wine. The government put down the strike and promised reforms.

Last week Premier Joseph Laniel issued a set of decrees designed to put the industry back on its feet. To keep only the best grades of wine on the market, growers will be compelled to turn over 12% of their harvest to the government, at a low price, for distillation into industrial alcohol. If there is still overproduction by 1958, the government will force the winemakers to uproot a percentage of their vines each year until output matches sales. As one expert summed it up: "The French wine industry is now at the crossroads, and the question is quality or quantity."

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