Gee, I wonder how Thomas Friedman rationalizes the rapidly approaching destruction of European wine traditions? He is so sure that globalization is the answer to every problem, and only the losers complain about the repercussions. Yet, somehow I don't see Mr. Friedman's wine cellar stocked with Two Buck Chuck, and wines found in Wal-Mart.
A Tide of Wine May Drive European Growers From a Way of Life: A few months ago Isidore Santamaria went out into his picturesque vineyard in southwestern France and ripped row upon row of neatly cultivated vines out of the ground.“It’s the worst thing for someone who has planted vines, tended them, watered them, watched them grow and looked after them,” he said of the farmland, some of which has been in his family for four generations.
“It’s almost like losing a child.”
Now Mr. Santamaria is contemplating something worse: uprooting his entire holding of 30 hectares, or 75 acres, within sight of France’s mountainous border with Spain.
The idea is to reduce the supply of locally produced, low-quality table wine, and in that way drain Europe’s “wine lake” of surplus stock before subsidies are slashed and the industry is exposed to the chill winds of a free, or at least a freer, market.The European Union aims to equip its winegrowers, mainly in France, Italy and Spain, to compete with rivals from Australia, the United States and Latin America. But to many small growers and their allies, it is nothing short of a declaration of war, a vivid example of the worst fears of globalization.
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