Vineyard owners, who blame the Government’s drink-driving campaign for a fall in sales, say a health warning would be a further blow.

Members of M DousteBlazy’s centre-right party, the Union for a Popular Movement, have taken up the winemaker’s cause, splitting the party over the issue.

M Douste-Blazy said he would introduce a law making it obligatory for the labels on wine bottles to include a message advising pregnant women against drinking alcohol.

His call came after a French state prosecutor began investigating a legal complaint from three women whose children suffer from a syndrome linked to alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

The women accuse wine producers of deliberately misleading them by failing to publicise the risks. Their lawyer, Maître Benoît Titran, pointed out that the French penal code included a requirement to highlight the dangers of products on sale to the public.

The issue is highly sensitive in France, where 250,000 people owe their livelihood to a wine industry facing its greatest crisis for almost a century.

But after sitting on the complaint for 18 months, the prosecution service in Lille, northern France, said that it had begun an inquiry that could lead to a fine and a damages claim against the State or wine producers’ professional bodies.

About 7,000 babies are thought to be born in France every year with foetal alcohol sydrome, which can result in slow physical and mental development, behavioural difficulties and, in the worst cases, birth deformities.

But winemakers are furious with the Health Minister and have appealed to Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Prime Minister, to overrule him.

Denis Verdier, the president of the French Federation of Wine Co-operatives, said: “It’s wrong to use pregant women as a scarecrow for the wider public.”

French vineyards face a crisis, with a barrel of Bordeaux selling for an average of €750 (£500) compared with €1,500 five years ago. Abroad, they are losing market share to New World wines and at home the French are drinking less. The average person consumes 58 litres a year, compared with 100 litres in 1960.

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