In January, for example, a Paris court condemned Le Parisien newspaper for an article about the finest Champagne to buy in the run up to Christmas 2005, because it ‘criminally’ encouraged people to drink a product which is a national glory, but one which is also considered, by law, dangerous for the public health. Moët et Chandon was also brought before the courts for a promotional campaign of its pink Champagnes, and condemned as a vile criminal.

Our wonderful doctors from the Association Nationale de Prévention en Alcoologie et en Addictologie (ANPAA) are rejoicing over their legal wins, but the citizens of France have a right to ask about the way this lobby is managing its public funding. For the moment, the results are hardly brilliant. Our young people, who seldom read Le Parisien, and who don’t actually have the means to drink Champagne, continue to scuttle their health on weekends with great drafts of hooch and kill themselves, and others, on the roads, without having seen these same doctors promoting preventative measures in night clubs and bars. The tragic results of this confusion - upheld by a botched law - between quality wine (and its reasonable consumption) and the way alcoholic drinks in general are being demonised will certainly continue to weaken the joy in the French art of living, even though we know it is one of the motors of our economic future.

Neighbouring countries have taken another route. Italy is protecting its historical, family oriented, viticultural heritage at an economic level, taking no taxes on stocks, nor on inheritances. Vineyards are taxed on the basis of production values, and not on the value of the property, as in France. Spain considers wine to be a quality agricultural food product, which incorporates the traditions of its different provinces, and is a key element in the art of Spanish living, as well as being crucial to its blossoming tourism industry. In France, if we continue to paint wine and its producers black, to the point of considering that all positive commentary about its value is a dangerous incitement to the criminal act of consuming an alcoholic drink, we risk losing a generation of tourists who will prefer the art of living practised by our neighbours. However, if we really want to change our outrageous Evin Law, which, if rigorously applied, forbids all independent and reliable information about wine, we must certainly not start by separating alcoholic drinks into different categories. Alcohol is one molecule, and it causes the same dependencies and dramatic consequences for millions of people, no matter where it is found. What is far more important is that people learn to drink in a responsible manner - and this is linked to education. The issues need to be viewed and dealt with in a larger framework, which involves the reinstating of morals, politeness, respect for others and respect for oneself. Our great wines, because of their price and rarity, are not the direct cause of thousands of deadly car accidents or cases of liver cirrhosis. Poison, pharmacists say, exists only in the dosage – and the dosage of great wines is not in itself a danger to public health. Notwithstanding that, the fragility of our youth and their addictive habits deserve more than a policeman on every corner.