I have reported on France\’s bizarre moves toward neo-prohibitionist laws regulating their wine industry before. Just noticed an interesting story in Decanter following up on this issue. At a recent conference in Europe, France\’s strategy was blasted by many from the wine industry as being completely out of touch with history and reality. Particularly, what is incensing people is the effort to lump wine in with spirits and then claim that all forms of alcohol consumption are \”dangerous\” and need to be highly regulated. This rationale is exactly what led to the disastrous experiment with prohibition in North America. It\’s odd that one of the world\’s leading wine producing countries would be putting forth these discredited theories. Here in British Columbia, this is exactly what led us into the morass of unworkable laws and regulation that we have today. Most of North America has been slowly unwinding the prohibition era mess and has moved (albeit slowly) to saner and more sensible policy. Hopefully, British Columbia will not be far behind and France will abruptly end its foray into reactionary territory.
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