사진 확대 In April 2016, angry farmers attacked a Spanish wine transport truck in southern France, spilling wine from a tank lorry. Maekyung DB
In April 2016, a small town in southern France, just over 10 km from the border with Spain. Thanks to the naturally occurring sulfur and salt, the streets of this small neighborhood, which has been called the “City of Healing” since ancient Rome, have turned red as if they were bloodstained. Did a terrorist attack happen?
Fortunately, the identity of the liquid that colored the streets red on this day was wine, not blood. It happened as French winemakers protested the importation of Spanish wine, which even made production standards looser and cheaper than their own. They dumped Spanish wine on the road, which was transported on land by tank lorry.
The amount of wine discarded on the road is about 70,000 liters. Based on 750ml wine bottles, 93,000 bottles are available. French winemakers say they only released the vehicles after writing loudly the phrase ‘inappropriate wine’ on the tank of wine-carrying vehicles. The French grape farmers’ protests on this day have become quite popular around the world.
Many wine producers in France, who claim to be their own wine suzerain, think the protests represent a conflict between agricultural protection in the country and EU free trade policies.
What’s interesting is that a similar incident took place in the Languedoc region of southern France more than 100 years ago through ‘wine’. Of course, it didn’t just end up throwing away wine then. The government defined the assembly and demonstration of producers as an insurrection, and the army dispatched to suppress it and bloodshed occurred. It’s the 1907 Langdock Wine Rebellion, which was also recorded in the French history books.
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The wine industry is ‘flabby’ with the opening of the canal
First of all, we need to find out why the Langdock region is so sensitive to wine imports from other countries. The region of Languedocruillon, a wine mountain in southern France bordering Spain, extends along the Pyrenees from the southeastern border to the Lorne River to the north and east. In this rich region, grapes have been cultivated and wine brewed for a very long time since ancient Roman times. Naturally, this area also has a high level of wine pride. However, the awareness of wine is relatively lacking compared to pride. Many of the more famous production sites have long existed, such as Bordeaux in the north, the Rhône Valley in the east, Burgundy in the northeast, and Champagne in the north, so they couldn’t see the light.
Wine in the region began to be known to other regions when the Midi Canal, which dug inland from the Mediterranean Sea, opened in the late 17th century. The canal has been linked to Bordeaux’s Garon Canal, which digs inland from the Atlantic Ocean, significantly shortening trade routes between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. The rush of traffic on this groundbreaking route led to a significant development of commerce in the Langdock region, where the canal belongs. With this atmosphere, langdog wine, which was mostly consumed in the region or country, also spreads throughout Europe.
However, the langdog wine industry, which began to blossom in the 1860s with the outbreak of the phylloxera, called the Black Death of Vine, quickly took the path to collapse. The vine, the raw material of wine, is being pulled out, because there was nothing I could do about it.
Low-quality wines have emerged to replace the lack of quality wine, and high-sugar wines mixed with raisin wine and other impurities have begun to be produced and distributed to distinguish the poor quality of grapes used in brewing. This problem was fatal to langdog wine. The storm has plunged the market share of langdog wines and threatened the survival of the region’s wine industry.
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Wine Rebellion protesters reach 800,000 in three months
The first signs of the rebellion emerged in the mid-1890s when wine producers in the Langdock region protested the flooding of the market with high-sugar wines, wines made from imported grapes, and other fruit in Vezier and other cities. It’s a complaint to the government, “We put a lot of resources and efforts into making high-quality wine, but why are we just looking at low-quality wine as it is?”
To make matters worse, in the 1890s and 1900s, in southern France, socialist and communist ideas rose significantly. As a result, Languedoc regional agricultural leaders launch wine cooperatives and begin full-scale collective action so that they can negotiate higher prices for their wines.
In February 1907, the first strike began. Marcelin Albert, one of the farmers’ leaders, sent a letter to Georges Clemento, then the French prime minister, expressing grievances from Langdock wine producers. But it didn’t change much.
Eventually, a month later, on March 11, 1907, a large group of stakeholders was held in the small town of Arzelier against many policies that led to the decline of the Langdock wine trade. There, the Comite d’Argeliers, which oversees the organization of local winemakers themselves and holds large demonstrations every Sunday, was formed.
When the committee is formed, farmers immediately organize a protest. In history, 600 people gathered in the village of Bizminervois three weeks later on the 31st of the same month, marking the first official protest.
Attendance soon increased significantly. About 5,000 people attended the Kursang rally in mid-April, while the protest in Regignan-Corbier in late April drew 20,000 to 25,000 people, including grape farm farmers, family members and relatives.
On May 12, a rally will be held in Vezier, the center of the Langdock wine industry. It is estimated that 150,000 people took to the streets protesting government policies. At that time, there were so many crowds trying to gather in Vezier that the train, which was almost the only means of public transportation, was full. The flames of the protest spread like wildfire. When protests were held in Perpignan, Carcason and Nim on 19 May, 26 June of the same month, and 2 June, more than 200,000 crowds were reported in attendance. Finally, on June 9th, 600,000 to 800,000 people gather in Montpellier and peak.
사진 확대 Angry crowds protesting during the French Langdock Wine Rebellion of 1907.
Put down the Rebellion…the declaration of martial law
In the end, starting with the Montpellier protests, the central government also took action. Clemenceau defines a series of protests that have persisted so far as a “challenge to the state order” and declares local martial law in key southern regions. They saw the wine producers’ protest as an insurrection. A martial law army of 34 regiments, consisting of 25,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry, was sent to the southern Languedoc-Middy region, where they were dispersed in major cities such as Vezier, Narbonne and Montpellier. For your information, the only time since then France has declared martial law, albeit locally, in a non-foreign currency crisis, was the 1961 Algerian officer coup attempt.
Protesters and the government, who didn’t want more bloodshed, eventually negotiate in Paris on June 22. Marcelin Albert, a member of the Argentinian committee, arrived in Paris in person to negotiate a resolution with Prime Minister Clemenceau and agreed on several resolutions. The agreement calls for reducing imports of foreign wines and curbing widespread production of wines with large additions of fruit or sugar other than grapes. It’s what it’s supposed to be. And this agreement became a historical trigger for the formation of an AOC system of French wines, which almost all countries are emulating and implementing today.
Wine Rebellion marks a milestone in history
What implications did the rebellion leave? First of all, it is historically evaluated as a tipping point in French agricultural modernization. This is because it evoked the imbalance of structure, the economic alienation suffered by the periphery in the process of industrialization, and the evils of a centralized market order. It also marked a turning point in the French peasant movement. After 1907, co-operatives and producers’ unions began to organize within the system in various parts of the country. I realized the importance of organized power. The “wine rebellion” of farmers in southern France became the seed of the institutional agricultural movement.
Today, however, regional production control policies are in place in almost all wine production areas in France, including Languedoc. This is the result of focusing on ‘making the right amount and good quality’ rather than ‘making a lot’. The local community has found its own way of survival.
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Wine is the wine produced by time. Along with the history of mankind, the history of wine began. Jeon Hyung-min’s Wine Frick tells interesting wine stories that we didn’t know about in a fun and delicious way.
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[Reporter Hyungmin]
Dining and Cooking