With gloom all around, President Sarkozy’s Government might have chosen another moment for its latest campaign. This one tells the French people to stop drinking wine.

To the anger of the drinks industry and disbelief of many patriots, the Ministry of Health has made alcohol one of the chief villains in a drive against cancer.

“The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged,” say guidelines that are drawn from the findings of the National Cancer Institute (INCA). A single glass of wine per day will raise the chance of contracting cancer by up to 168 per cent, claims the ministry’s brochure.

Forget those 1980s findings that antioxidants in wine were good for health, said the French experts. “Small daily doses of alcohol are the most harmful. There is no amount, however small, which is good for you,” said Dominique Maraninchi, INCA’s president.

Authorities elsewhere have been telling people in recent years to go dry if they want to stay healthy. But the advice was especially sobering, coming from the Government of France, a country where wine is part of life and the national heritage.

The pleasantly illustrated ministry brochure makes grim reading. The INCA collated hundreds of international studies and summarised the relation between types of cancer with food, drink and lifestyle. Apart from wine, the dangerous stuff is red meat, charcuterie and salt. A pavé de rum-steakmight not sound so mouth-watering after reading: “The risk of colon-rectal cancer rises by 29 per cent per 100-gramme portion of red meat per day and 21 per cent per 50-gramme portion of charcuterie.”

Alcohol facilitates cancers of the mouth, larynx, oesophagus, colon-rec-tum and breast, say the guidelines.

The wine producers are crying foul, accusing the health lobby of trying to kill one of the glories of the nation. They note the suspicious coincidence that France now has its first teetotal President. Mr Sarkozy sips mineral water and orange juice when all around him are knocking back the champagne and burgundy.

“This persecution of wine has to stop,” said the General Association of Wine Producers. The growers say that the scientific evidence is contradictory and they point to a World Health Organisation study which found that moderate consumption helped to prevent cancer.

Xavier de Volontat, president of the wine producers’ assocation in the southwestern Languedoc region, said: “The extremists must not be allowed to take consumers hostage . . . Wine consumption has dropped by 50 per cent over the last 20 years in France but cancer has increased. You have to admit, that’s a paradox.”

“We never said that alcohol is not dangerous for health,” Mr de Volontat said. “We are for responsible, reasonable and moderate consumption . . . It is not in our interest to see our consumers dying of cancer or in car accidents.”

Vintage statistics

- 60 litres of wine consumed per head in France in 1997

- 56 litres of wine consumed per head in 2005

- 2 per cent decrease in the sale of wine in France in 2007 (by volume)

- 1 per cent decline in sales (by value)

- 2,134 acres of land estimated to be used for vineyards across France

- 5 million litres: the amount of wine estimated to be produced by France annually

- 34 per cent of the world wine market is made up of French exports

Sources: www.euromonitor.com; www.wineinstitute.org; www.cnwinenews.com

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