'What future for wine if you can no longer talk about it?'
Good and pertinent question on a road sign in Anjou last summer
(photo from Micaela and Sue, La Grande Maison)

Today the French parliament will continue to debate the measures proposed by Roselyne Bachelot – namely restrictions on sales of alcohol in garages and publicity on the internet.

The news appears to be more positive, Bachelot apparently accepts an amendment to allow alcohol to continue to be sold at garages but is firm on the total restriction on selling chilled alcohol from any garage.

On publicity about alcohol on the internet the two deputies, Yves Bur (UMP) et Jean-Marie Le Guen (PS), whose amendment proposed limiting this to solely producers or négociants, are reported to prepared to accept another, more sensible, amendment. This has been put forward by Jacques Domergue from the Herault in the south of France and would authorise publicity for alcohol anywhere on the net, except for sites for young people or sporting sites.

Fuller details in French here.

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From Tim York on the wine forum of Tom Cannavan’s wine-pages
This morning Télématin interviewed Roselyne Bachelot, Minister of Health.

Against a politely hostile interviewer she made the following points about the new draft law on l'Hôpital, etc.

- Her overriding aim is to protect the young.

- It has never been her intention to ban promotional and professional wine tastings and these will be excluded from the scope of the ban on "open bars" as will consumption during "fêtes"; she was asked to explain what this last meant in practice but did not.

Bachelot's measures to ban free wine tasting appeared
to menace events like the Salon des Vins de Loire

Le Figaro reports this morning that France’s Minister of Health, Roselyne Bachelot, has argued for a reasonable, cultural and balanced approach to drinking alcohol. And that her measures to ban ‘free drinking’ in ‘open bars’ will not restrict tasting at amateur or professional wine fairs. As France is a wine producing country it would be impossible and unthinkable to ban wine.

Bachelot says that she has never seen wine producers offer as much wine as you want rather that they give only small samples to taste. She also says that she is in favour of allowing advertising for alcoholic products on the net but under ‘drastic conditions’ – no spams, no pop-ups and not on sites directed to the young or sports sites. She would have a watchdog to follow everything to do with alcohol on the net.

I have to wonder why it has taken Roselyne Bachelot so long to make her position clearer. It could be good news about alcohol and the net but it depends upon the detail of the 'drastic conditions' and the powers and scope of her watchdog.