France, the world’s largest exporter of wine in terms of value (it’s behind Italy and Spain in volume), and also the world’s biggest consumer of wine, has a slightly schizophrenic relationship with wine. On the one hand, you cannot separate France from wine. The baguette-cheese-wine picnic is the ultimate French cliché. On the other hand, you have the non-imbibing French President Sarkozy, and a well-coordinated, and effective anti-alcohol lobby that has placed winemakers and other people involved in the wine business in the absurd situation where they have to defend the place of wine in French society.
It’s encouraging, then, to hear that a French television channel devoted to wine might be launched in the near future. The Paris-based entertainment company Media-Place Partners has requested authorization from the CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel), which regulates the French radio and television frequencies, to launch what they are calling “the world’s first international channel dedicated to wine” (I guess that they’ve never heard of Wine Television, a wine channel from Canada that has been around since 2000). Edonys, as the channel is to be called, will be in both French and English. Its target audience will be wine amateurs and professionals within the European Union, but the CSA request says that it will be broadcast via cable, satellite and the Internet, so it would likely be accessible elsewhere.
The Edonys channel, according to a press release, will contain wine tastings, visits to vineyards and wine regions, an accompanying magazine for wine professionals, announcements about wine sales and auctions, and films and reports about the wine industry. Forty hours a month of interesting, professionally produced reporting about wine and the people involved in making, distributing and selling French wine would beat watching old Starsky & Hutch reruns (yes, this much-long-of-tooth American TV series is still running on French television). I hope that the Audiovisual Committee gives them the OK to proceed.
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Considering the ‘official’ French attitude to wine I reckon the TV channel will have to be plastered with health warnings… Let’s see what happens.
It will be interesting to see how they get around the French laws for not advertising alcohol!
Will every program have a health warning…watch with moderation.
We have a project that would include French wine too. As part of the http://www.NoCookieCutterWines.com project there will be a site called French Food and WineTV.com (initial sites are test sites)
This link describes the project and our desire for others to join us. I welcome any feedback or ideas on evolving the project. Too much great food and wine to share.
http://nocookiecutterwines.wordpress.com/add-your-wine-food-or-destination/
Ron, the No Cookie Cutter Wines project appears to be an effort worth supporting. I’ve subscribed to your blog’s RSS feed, and I look forward to learning about future developments. Thanks for commenting about it here.
watching French TV is pretty lethal right now, without a wine channel. dire is not the word.
Hah, I just started a project that’s the amateur-blogger equivalent to Edonys in a lot of ways. Funny how much synergy there can be in the world.
Good write up.
Thanks for writing, Ryan. You have a lot to say and you say it well, from a point of view that is refreshingly different. We share a love for the Languedoc and its wine. Hope to meet you someday. In the meantime, I’ll be reading your blog and enjoying your videos.
@ Brett
That a wine tv channel should be plastered isn’t very appropriate, is it?
@louise
According to French authorities, a wine channel must surely be even more lethal!
I happen to live not far from where they (Edonys) have their offices, and judging from that they have not come very far in the financing of the project… But it’s a nice project. Hope it will get off the ground.
(And in the mean time you can always watch BKWine TV: http://www.youtube.com/bkwine
A touch less ambitious. )