The French National Assembly is this week debating amendments to a raft of laws aimed at stopping under-age drinking.
The legislation, titled 'hospital, patients, health, territory', also contains several measures with far wider consequences for the wine industry.
Measures being debated in the Assembly include a ban on free wine tasting, more specific health warnings on bottles, and the legality of mentioning wine on the internet. Forty such projects are being discussed.
French broadsheet Le Figaro said the wine and health lobbies within the government faced a 'war of amendments'.
Marie Christine Tarby of wine lobby Vins et Societe told decanter.com some of the measures were 'crazy'.
'There are 600,000 French wines referenced on the internet,' she said. 'It is crazy to say the wine industry doesn't need the internet; that it is just the big beer and spirits companies who are affected.'
A proposed amendment to the controversial Evin Law regulating alcohol and tobacco advertising was also inserted by politician Richard Mallie 'to allow journalists to mention wine or champagne in a press article without being accused of indirect advertising.'
A vote is expected next week.
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It appears that the French have gone as crazy as the US did when it enacted Prohibition in 1919. Making the product illegal doesn't make it less available just more attractive as a taboo. What happened to the French love of food and wine have the deputies become converts to a new and sinister plot of the anti-alcohol lobby?
Michael, California, USA
This is not the France that I grew to love and admire – who ARE these people?
Don Clemens, IL, USA
From what I understand, one of the proposals is to ban "drink as much as you like for a fixed fee"-events, as well as all serving of wine for free. This would apparently mean that free samples at wine fairs would be banned. Also, free samples at producer's facilities would be banned! One can only assume that French bureaucrats and politicians don't want the country to have much wine tourism, or give producers much possibility to market their wines. It seems like a proposal that could hit small, quality-oriented producers harder than large wine companies that e.g. export to supermarkets. I wonder if France intentionally wants to kill or maim its wine industry or if they just don't understand what they are doing?
Tomas Eriksson, Brussels
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It appears that the French have gone as crazy as the US did when it enacted Prohibition in 1919. Making the product illegal doesn't make it less available just more attractive as a taboo. What happened to the French love of food and wine have the deputies become converts to a new and sinister plot of the anti-alcohol lobby?
