The reason of the internal war between the President of the French Republic and the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn is wine. For the haematologist, in fact, the wine “is like all alcohol and is bad for your health“, but the president opposes “I drink it at lunch and dinner“
In France, wine is like baguette and like the Eiffel Tower. In fact, the French have never been able to completely trust – says Stefano Montefiori, correspondent from Paris for Repubblica.it – in their former president Nicolas Sarkozy, a teetotaler.
This time, the reason for the dispute in a country where wine is part of the collective imagination, was a statement by the health minister.
Agnès Buzyn, this the name of the minister, 55, declared in fact to France 2 that “Wine is like all other alcoholic beverages. The wine industry wanted to make us believe so far that wine is different from other spirits. Well, it’s false“.
This declaration detonated a conflict in a country that thrives on wine.
France, in fact, is a country where wine and spirits are at the second place in the ranking of major exports, behind the aviation industry. France is the country where in 85% of cases a bottle is opened everyday. And where Champagne, Bordeaux and Bourgogne are synonymous with quality nectar.
The producers, enraged, turned to Macron, while the Figaro newspaper was overwhelmed by letters from professionals and doctors who were right to the minister, stating that alcohol kills fifty thousand people a year. And that 60% of alcohol consumption is made of wine.
Macron defends them by going against the minister: “I drink wine twice a day” and pulling out an old quote from Georges Pompidou. But as the correspondent from Paris adds, the civil war of wine, in France, still seems only at the beginning.
