FRENCH DESTROY SPANISH WINES

THERE’S BEEN a lot of innocent wine destroyed in France of late as tensions have reached a boiling point over cheap Spanish imports.  Over the last year militant winemaker group CAV – or CRAV as it is sometimes known – has attacked lorries carrying Spanish wines and set fire to importers’ offices in the past year.  The most recent incident involved winemakers staging a protest by destroying Spanish bag-in-box wines at a branch of the Carrefour supermarket near to Montpellier in the Languedoc-Roussillon, which is France’s largest wine producing region.  Thousands of winemakers marched through the streets to complain at the unfair competition that they face from Spain and about the lack of government support for their industry.  According to local unions, French supermarkets were not doing enough to inform drinkers about the origins of the wines on their shelves.