Doesn't the US do the same thing via destruction of certain crops? Despite water shortages in some areas, farmers are still required to destroy a percentage of their crops each year.
The US also does this via mandates of corn derived gasoline and corn subsidies. The corn industry is subsidized to an absurd degree in the US.
"The south-west Languedoc region, the country’s largest wine area"
This looks weird. Languedoc is in south east, or south-center, but definitely not south west ( which would be the bordeaux region if you're talking about wine).
I'm also skeptical it's the largest wine producing area. Especially compared to burgundy, or bordeaux region.
But the rest of their sentence is correct: their wine is definitely "full bodied". Meaning it's shit ( although to be fair they made a bit of progress in the last 20 years)
Guardian is behind the times. Languedoc, Roussillon, and Midi-Pyrénées have been subsumed into a region now called Occitanie. Bordeaux lies in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. And the statistics [0] show it isn't even close: Occitanie raises 2.5 litres of wine for every litre from Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
It is beyond dispute that the value of the wines are different. Bordeaux' wines are on average much better than Minervois', but wine lakes are the province of Occitanie.
