a profession in perpetual balance between the law of nature and that of the market
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FRANCE 3 – WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 7 AT 9.10 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY
It is a beautiful and fascinating story that Emmanuelle Nobécourt tells us: that of the winegrowers, which merges with that of France, so much the vine, those and those who work it are consubstantial with the national identity. It is first of all a beautiful journey through time, richly illustrated with moving images of the harvest, of wine festivals in villages devoted to this culture, of painful images too, of a bruised history. A journey to the heart of the great regions shaped by the vineyards and, beyond, to colonial times when the southern Mediterranean helped to satisfy an ever-increasing demand. The time when Algeria was “a giant press”.
This journey has been intelligently constructed, punctuated by explanations and often piquant anecdotes from winegrowers. If the film recalls the Greek, Roman, religious origins of the establishment of the vine, it quickly takes us to the XXe century, combining often astonishing archive images and current testimonies.
Throughout the century, winegrowers accompanied the great changes in society, as much as they suffered the consequences. The documentary recalls that, at the beginning of the last century, the winegrower worked the vines, produced the wine but did not sell it – it was the prerogative of the merchants.
From 1900, revolts of winegrowers began, fueled by three years of major slumps. In 1901, the first French cooperative, Vignerons libres, was born in the Hérault, in Maraussan, celebrated by Jean Jaurès (1859-1914).
Series of Challenges
Anger persists, especially against the widespread practice of adulterated wines, a mixture of glycerine, grape juice, sugar…, authorized by the State after the crisis due to phylloxera which destroyed a large part of the vineyard. “We called it ‘three-man wine’: one man drank the wine and two stood on either side to hold it so it wouldn’t pass out,” says the Alsatian André Hugel.
The mid-1970s winegrower revolts are abundantly illustrated, in particular that against the imports of Spanish wines, in Montredon (Aude), near Narbonne, on March 4, 1976, which caused two deaths after the exchanges of gunfire between the police and peasants.
The two world wars are discussed at length: wine, “fuel” for the soldiers during the first, colossal war prizes for the Nazi regime during the second…
The documentary does not forget the professional, technological, almost ideological evolutions. The horse replaced by the tractor, “the friend who enters the house”, says a vintage advertisement. Chemistry, experienced as a benefactor, against vine diseases, for which it ensures yields. The generalized arrival also of consultant oenologists in the cellars, denounced by some, who see it as a standardization in response to market demand.
Finally came organic farming at the end of the 20th century.e century, the evolution of tastes, the rise of terroirs which impose themselves as new wine-growing horizons, in the face of large standardized productions. Climate change closes the documentary and the series of challenges that winegrowers and winegrowers still have to meet. This documentary is to be seen without moderation.
The epic of the winegrowers, documentary by Jeanne Burel and Emmanuelle Nobécourt, told by Sam Karmann (Fr., 2022, 97 min).
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