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| Regional Committee for Viticultural Action | |
|---|---|
| Comité Régional d'Action Viticole | |
| Other name | Comité d'action viticole |
| Founded | 1975 |
| Dates active | 1975–present |
| Country | France |
| Active regions | Languedoc-Roussillon |
| Ideology | |
| Status | Active |
| Size | 1,000 |
Comité Régional d'Action Viticole (CRAV, Regional Committee for Viticultural Action; Occitan: Comitat Regional per l'Accion Viticòla), or sometimes Comité d'action viticole (CAV, Committee for Viticultural Action; Comitat per l'Accion Viticòla), is a group of militant French wine producers of Occitania. It has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, including bombing government buildings, hijacking tankers, and destroying large quantities of non-French wine.
CRAV is mainly active in Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France, which is the French wine region which the group believes has been plagued by surplus production and a subsequent need to adapt the quality and quantity of wine produced to changing market realities, including reduced domestic demand for simple wine for everyday consumption. This process, which has involved considerable European Union subsidies, has had negative effects on smaller producers and has met with various protests, of which CRAV is the most violent.
CRAV's publicised demands have regularly included elements which are more-or-less impossible for French politicians to implement under European Union rules, since they would mean interfering with the single market and introducing national subsidies on top of the Common Agricultural Policy. The group has called for higher restrictive tariffs against the rising imports of Spanish and Italian wine, where lower social costs, less red tape and a different industry structure leads to more economical wine production. Consumer preference for wine brands, uncomplicated wine labels, varietal labelling, and New World wine styles has also led to expanding exports from Australia, Chile, the United States, and other New World producers.
Frustration spreads far beyond radical producers. "Each bottle of American and Australian wine that lands in Europe is a bomb targeted at the heart of our rich European culture," argues grower Aime Guibert. The French manager for the E. & J. Gallo Winery, Sylvain Removille, reports that he and his sales staff have repeatedly been physically assaulted.
On 17 May 2007, the group released a video in which it was stated that "blood would flow" if Nicolas Sarkozy failed to act to raise the price of wine.
