302 WINE LAW Going back to the 19th century, Pasteur, whose work on fermentation and diseases of wine is well- known, believed wine could “be rightly considered as the most healthy and safest of drinks”3. It is true that, at that time, the quality of water from wells intended to supply the population was often unsanitary and the cause of many pathologies4. In hindsight, the “wine controversy” divided doctors and poets on the respective therapeutic qualities of Burgundy or Champagne wines. However, Pasteur’s remarks focused on wine made solely and exclusively from fermented grape juice – in other words, a natural, reliable and marketable wine. However, in 1860 and 1880, there was a crisis in the winegrowing world following the destruction of vines by phylloxera5. Since then, all manner of fraud and falsification has proliferated, coupled with a vast increase in the importation of foreign wines and the production of alternative beverages, the latter being termed artificial wines. At the time, the friction between representatives of the wine-growing areas and the medical profession was played out in Parliament during debates on the economy, and health and social issues6. Consequently, the production of wine became the battleground between the hygienist movement7 and representatives of the wine industry, with doctors concerned for the consumers’ health, and winegrowers with the economic health of the wine industry. The Great War changed all this. The failure of the French military high command’s strategy in August 1914 was a stark reminder of the 1870 surrender. High command considered that the fault lay entirely with the troops. The military doctrine of the time viewed war as an exercise in purification and salvation, enabling an elite to consolidate their power to combat the advent of democracy in France. Consequently, failure could only be attributed to the troops’ inadequacy rather than the generals’ fallibility. According to Joffre, the failure of the 15th Army Corps, which was made up of soldiers from Marseilles and Montpellier, was due to individual shortcomings, with soldiers being represented as “good-for-nothing”, devious and undisciplined. For the most 3 L. Pasteur, “Studies on wine, its diseases, causes which provoke it, new procedures for preserving it and for aging it”, Imprimerie Nationale, Paris, 1866, p. 56. 4 The preventive and curative virtues of fermented grape juice have been known for a long time, cf. G. Garrier, “Social and cultural history of wine”, Larousse 2005, pp. 117-120 and 157-160; J. F. Gautier, “Wine, from mythology to oenology”, ed. Féret, 2003 special, pp. 93-94. 5 G. Garrier, “Le phylloxéra. A Thirty Years’ War. 1870-1900”, ed. Albin Michel, 1989. 6 O. Serra, “Vin et Hygiénisme dans le discours parlementaire, Parlement(s)”, Revue d’Histoire politique, no. 28, 2018/2, special, p. 193 7 Etym. from hugieinos sandstone, which means “what is good for the health”. Hygienism emanates from a medical discourse that establishes a link between the health of individuals and the cleanliness or purity of their environment. More generally, we call hygienism the movement that defends an organic vision of health, with a healthy and pure body in a just and healthy city.
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