As the debate about minimum alcohol pricing rears its ugly head once again let us look back nostalgically to 1930's France.
A junior minister of Public Works and Tourism of the time (none other than Gaston Gérard, an epicurean mayor of Dijon to whom we owe an eponymous recipe involving chicken) could write the following words:
"We can never show enough gratitude to wine. Frenchmen owe to it their great moral qualities, their wit, gaiety, sang-froid, courage....Wine drinking sustains the body with vitamins, calories, nutrients and can protect it against certain microbial viruses (sic - he did not seem to know the difference between a microbe and a virus). Wine drinking averts alcoholism. Wine drinking prolongs life. Wine drinking prepares a future generation: intelligent, healthy and vigorous. Let us say it now and repeat it ceaselessly: wine cures ill-health, nourishes and fortifies."
(freely translated from Le Désir du Vin by Jean-Robert Pitte Fayard 2009 p279)
It is not reported how much wine mayor Gérard had drunk when he wrote this, but who would wager today that in 5 years time someone making a similar statement would not be locked up for the new crime of 'incitation to alcoholism' ?
You read it here first.
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