You know the biddies love a bad pun – but they didn’t make this one up! In this mini episode, Kara and Calla learn about the CRAV wine terroirists fighting to keep the French wine in Languedoc on the shelves and produced the same way it has been for the past century.

Listen:

Sources:

Study Notes for Wine Terroirists:

THE MYTHOLOGY OF CRAV

  • The wine industry of the Languedoc area was at the center of one of the most violent eruptions of civil unrest in the country’s modern history. (Spring/Summer 1907)
    • Angry crowds brought the region to a standstill battling with the army against what they saw as neglect from Paris after sales of local wines had collapsed in the face of competition from Algeria and adulterated wines from elsewhere in France
  • Said to have influenced this secretive alliance of disenfranchised wine producers that began in the 1960s

THE WHO/WHAT/WHERE/WHY/HOW of CRAV

  • WHO: Short for Regional Action Committee of Winemakers (but in French) (Comite Regional d’Action Viticole)
  • WHAT: Wine terrorists and militants
  • WHERE: Languedoc, France
  • WHY: “Why do we do it? Because we are never listened to.”
    • Tensions have been rising due to an issue with Spanish imports into this region and heading to major supermarkets
    • Grown out of their own traditions and vehemently opposed to cheap, imported Spanish wine (Spain borders Languedoc)
      • Languedoc was once known for easy-drinking “vin de table” but then France began importing bulk table wine from Spain, Italy, and the New World killing their home table wine market
      • Spanish wine costs less than half of what a French table wine would cost 
  • HOW: Here are some of the stories
    • 2008: detained Helene Simone – a chief inspector from France’s Inspection du Travail who was on her way to a winegrower in Albi
      • She was apparently assaulted and detained for four hours and threatned
    • August 2016: Attacked the Biron merchant opening 5 vats of wine and sending the wine gushing into the streets of this town
    • April 2016: 150 French growers gathered at the Le Boulou motorway toll station about 10 miles from the Spanish border to monitor the number of wine tankers coming into France causing a lot of anger
      • Some of these growers hijacked five tankers and flooded the motorway with tens of thousands of litres of red wine
    • July 2016: Broke into and set fire to the Vinadeis offices, one of southern France’s biggest wine companies