Wine Law

exchange between the supporters of each ideology, thus reigniting the controversy over the consumption of wine and, indirectly, on the methods of communication of wine. Going back in time, Pasteur, whose work on fermentations and diseases of wine is well known, was of the opinion that wine could "rightly be considered as the most healthy and safest of drinks” 3 . It is true that, at that time, the quality of water from wells intended to supply the population was often unsanitary and the cause of many pathologies 4 . In hindsight, the “wine controversy” divided doctors and poets on the respective therapeutic qualities of Burgundy or Champagne wines. However, Pasteur’s remarks focused on wine made solely and exclusively from fermented grape juice. In other words, a natural, reliable and marketable wine. However, the second part of the 19 th century was marked by the crisis in the wine-growing world following the destruction of vines by phylloxera in 1860 and 1880 5 . Since then, all manner of fraud and falsification has proliferated, coupled with a huge increase in the importation of foreign wines, as well as the production of alternative beverages, the latter being termed artificial wines. At the time, the friction between representatives of the wine growing areas and the medical profession was played out in Parliament during debates on the economy, and health and social issues 6 . Thus, the production of wine became the battle ground between the hygienics movement 7 and representatives of the wine industry, with doctors concerned for the health of consumers, and winegrowers with the economic health of the wine industry. The Great War changed all this. The failure of the French military high command’s strategy in August 1914 was a stark reminder of the surrender of 1870. High command considered 3 L. Pasteur, Studies on wine, its diseases, causes which provoke it, new procedures for preserving it and for aging it, Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, 1866, p. 56 4 The preventive and curative virtues of fermented grape juice have been known for a long time, cf. G. Garrier, Social and cultural history of wine, Larousse 2005, p. 117 to 120 and p. 157 to 160; J.F. Gautier, Wine, from mythology to oenology, ed. Féret, 2003, special. p. 93 and 94 5 G. Garrier, Le phylloxéra. A Thirty Years’ War. 1870-1900, ed. Albin Michel 1989 6 O. Serra, Vin et Hygiénisme dans le discours parlementaire, Parlement(s), Revue d’Histoire politique, n°28, 2018/2, spé. p. 193 7 Etymom. From hugieinos sandstone, which means “what is good for the health”. Hygienism emanates from a medical discourse that establishes a link between the health of individuals and the cleanliness or purity of their environment. More generally, we call hygienism, a movement that defends an organic vision of health, with a healthy and pure body in a just and healthy city.