IN A gesture likely to bring an apoplectic flush to the face of any dedicated claret drinker, French wine growers have proposed a desperate plan to prop up their slumping industry against New World competition by handing thousands of barrels to industrial distillers.

It is the first time that grand wines protected by the Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) label have been treated in such a way. And as is usually the case with French agriculture, the vignerons are counting on their Government and Brussels to foot much of the bill for mopping up a wine lake of eminently drinkable if unfashionable quality.

The plan to distil more than 266 million bottles of Appellation d’origine contrôlée wine, to become ethanol for vehicles or other products, conjures up the bizarre concept of European drivers filling their tanks with 2004 Bordeaux — and other vintages.

It is a symptom of the plight of growers in Bordeaux, Burgundy and other traditional wine regions as they face their worst crisis since the phylloxera disease killed many of the country’s vines a century ago. The world’s drinkers are turning away from complicated and uneven French AOC wines which bear the names of obscure châteaux in favour of simply and memorably branded tipples from the New World. At the same time the domestic market is shrinking as the French heed medical advice and the threat of the breathalyser and cut down on their consumption.

The ploy by the growers’ and merchants’ organisations would have been unthinkable when AOC labels ruled the world market for medium to higher-quality wines. The EU millions that were spent in recent decades ending the wine lakes applied in France to the humble vin de table and vin de pays, not to the grander AOC labels. Only Champagne and the highest-quality Bordeaux, Burgundies and Loire wines are untouched by the worst slump since the early 20th century.

The 460 protected AOC estates, with their mystique of le terroir — the authenticity of place — still help to keep France in its rank as the world’s biggest wine exporter, with 20 per cent of the global market. But they have suffered from the simpler wines of Australia, New Zealand, California and the rest of the New World. French growers are gradually coming to accept that the AOC label, often impenetrable to the uninitiated, can sometimes mask indifferent plonk when consumers want recognisable labels with reliable quality.

Onivins, the national wine industry organisation, wants the Government to back its demand for the mass distillation of excess wine next Monday when the Agriculture Ministry announces the latest of many plans to rescue the national wine industry.

“We have to purge the market and distillation is the least bad solution,” Christian Gely, president of the wine commission at the FNSEA, the national farmers’ union, said yesterday. “It is psychologically difficult for a wine-grower who puts all his time and love into his vines to send his wine to the distillery, but economically it is a necessity.”

Growers say that 250 million litres must be taken out of the market so that prices return to an economic level, including 200 million of the 2,600 million litres of AOC wine produced in 2004, a bumper year. Since the market for brandy and similar products is saturated, the AOC wines would have to be turned into chemicals. The FNSEA wants the EU and French state to provide subsidies that would almost double the £13 per 100 litres which will be paid for château wine that is reduced to alcohol used for fuel and pharmaceuticals.

The more radical vintners want to create clear brands of the Australian or Californian type, with grape varieties on the label, rather than the name of a village, château or estate which may be unpronouceable for a non-Gallic tongue.

Gallic pride is, however, driving a rearguard defence of the supposedly superior AOC system against colonial upstarts with oak chips, “chemicals” and irrigation of vineyards. “Comparing an AOC, with its terroir and centuries of savoir faire, to an Australian wine is like comparing Mozart with rap music,” one château vigneron said recently. It was pointed out to him that far more people buy rap than Mozart.

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