Winegrowers demonstrate in region's capital

The start of the demonstration at Place Peyrou, Montpellier

I chose a bad day for a RDV with a client on Wednesday. The meeting had been arranged two weeks ago, and was to be held in offices situated in Rue de la Loge, Montpellier. I thought the city was busier than usual when I arrived and parked in the Place de la Comedie large car park. Wednesday is usually busy as it's the children's day off from school, so it's the day that mum can take them with her to do some shopping. But it seemed much busier than normal.

As I left the underground car park I saw lots more activity and it was then I realised I had chosen the day of the big Winegrowers demonstration. Bad decision, but an important client, so I had to go ahead and try to get through.

The reason for the demonstration is well known. For a long time the winegrowers in this area have been making complaints about the perilous state of the wine growing industry in Languedoc. Normally this has involved lobbying politicians or holding large demonstration - like today's, to raise public awareness.

Unfortunately, many members of the wine growing community feel that this is not enough and many times have resorted to violence. This has included throwing sticks of dynamite at agriculture ministry offices in Montpellier and Carcassonne causing serious damage, burning cars, including a car outside ministry offices in Nîmes, trashing and setting fire to the Péage offices near Pézenas, trashing local supermarkets, who they say either do not pay enough for the wine - or worse still, they sell wine from other countries instead of only French wine.

The government did act in response to the lobbying and demonstrations but the €70 million rescue plan tabled by the minister of agriculture Dominique Bussereau has been widely criticised for not going far enough. The winegrowers say they need and deserve more.

So this time they had a very large demonstration, completing blocking many parts of the city. I must add that David says that the French are by far the best at organising and staging demonstrations and strikes. Stood in the middle and looking at today's event's, I believe he must be right.

Then, after what was essentially a peaceful if not very noisy 'manifestation', the fringe element did start to cause some serious problems. I had long returned home, passing hundreds of gendarmes along the motorway and at the Pézenas péage, and the TV and radio reports were full of the events that occurred after the main demonstration in Montpellier had finished.

Several coach loads of winegrowers and their supporters, homeward bound, decided to stop at various locations on the way. The police did their best to stop them - they blocked off the town of Pézenas with over 200 gendarmes, and Béziers with even more gendarmes.

However, the demonstrators managed to stop their coaches near the village of Servian. They attacked the Lidl supermarket, trashed several police cars, lit fires on the route nationale and even set off rocket flares at the patrolling police helicopter, before the gendarmes repelled them with tear gas.

This was a sad end to what could have been a popular demonstration - the whole community depends upon a thriving wine industry so there is a lot of sympathy for the winegrowers. However, with so much world competition, and a shrinking home market (within France, wine consumption has fallen to 50 litres per adult per year, compared to 100 litres in the 1960s) it is more and more difficult for the winegrowers.

Perhaps a change of tactics is needed by all those involved in producing wine if matters are to improve.