Joe Duggan (Reporter)
A GANG of French winemakers have pulled the cork on Spanish lorries carrying gallons of red plonk.
The angry mob ambushed the four tankers 10 miles from the Spanish border close to Perpignan, sending 70,000 litres of claret booze gushing over the motorway.
Other protesters, furious at the vast amounts of cheap Spanish wine France imports, scrawled graffiti on the lorries.
French wine producers’ president Frederic Rouanet said: “We’ve been checking the wine coming in for a month, but nobody cares. Today we got tough.”
Spanish wine sells for €1.13 a litre abroad compared to €4.86 for a litre of French wine.
But French winemakers claim the Spanish wine is poor quality.
“If a French vineyard produced wine using the Spanish regulations, he quite simply couldn’t sell it,” said Rouanet.
The French are ‘gauled’ by the good quality and lower price of many Spanish wines. But there is bad wine everywhere, including France.
Part of the price difference is in the tax-free status of Spanish wine; another part in the huge production. I saw Alentejo Portuguese in rural villages use bad wine to wash their stone steps – a noble act.
My Spanish neighbour uses bad wine to clean his cesspit. Breaks down the molecules faster, so he was telling me.
Actually sounds like it might help, if fermentation is continuing. Strictly no cleaning fluids though, bleach etc. Does it pong Fred?
A laudable act as well!