Even before becoming President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron showed color: he loved wine, knew the vineyards, spoke about it with ease and supported the sector. While presidential candidates are reluctant to raise the subject – too many blows to take on the side of medicine – he accepted, in December 2016, a filmed interview offered on the spot by the newspaper South West and the magazine Land of Wines.
We see Emmanuel Macron tasting wines blind, identifying them (“It’s a burgundy. The nose does not deceive! »), identify a Sauvignon from Entre-Deux-Mers and a rosé from Provence, name their favorite wines. Also considering that“a meal without wine is a bit sad”what to drink while eating “part of our civilization”.
A few weeks later, just before the presidential election, the candidate mentioned, in The Review of the wine of France, the issue of wine tourism or competition for France from Chilean wines in China. In the vineyard, we still talk about it with emotion.
A president who stands out
Before Macron, no president of the Vand République was not interested in wine. Some drank but didn’t talk about it or didn’t care what they drank. On the other hand, for forty years, many measures have underlined its dangerousness. Wine was banned in high school canteens only under Giscard. The famous Evin law aimed at limiting alcohol advertising while delivering a health message dates from Mitterrand in 1991. The logo “prohibited for pregnant women” came at the end of Chirac’s term in 2006.
Emmanuel Macron, he detonated. Above all, he has publicly chosen his camp between the health authorities, who constantly point out the dangerousness of alcohol, and a wine sector, but also a large majority of French people, who recall other facets of wine: he represents the second export post of the French economy, an art of living too, an asset for tourism, the enhancement of heritage or landscape.
“We have to stop annoying the French,” said Mr. Macron at the 2018 Agricultural Show
Thus, at the opening of the Agricultural Show in 2018, while the Minister of Health Agnès Buzin intends to put in place a communication to underline the danger of alcohol from the first glass, the president closes the debate in three sentences: “Me, I drink wine at noon and in the evening. » “We have to stop annoying the French. » “As long as I am President, there will be no amendment to toughen the Evin law. » At his side was Audrey Bourolleau, his “agriculture, fishing, forestry and rural development” adviser. Before joining Macron in his campaign, in early 2017, she was the general delegate of Vin & Société, the French wine lobby. In the president’s office, she helped the sector. In line with the convictions of the President of the Republic.
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