Bandol vineyards in Danger?

S

SteveTimko

Steve Timko
Kermit Lynch's latest newsletter indicates some in France want to build a high-speed train through Bandol vineyards:

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kermitlynch.com

"France’s fast train, the TGV, wants a new line, new tracks, to speed people from Marseille to Nice. Their brilliant idea is to build the tracks through the vineyards! Wouldn’t that be great? To encourage even more tourism, they want to destroy a national treasure. I am told that the travel time between Marseille and Nice would be cut by only twenty minutes."

I wrote a letter to oppose construction of a parking lot on August Clape's Cornas vineyards. Anything an American wine geek can do to protest this?
 
If I grok it all arights, there was a big presentation to the Transportation Minister last November (click) and some kind of capitulation leading to this announcement in December (click). Note that there is still plenty of contention but I think the Bandol vineyards are safe. [I hope a more-skilled Francophone will double-check me.]

I also discovered more high-speed train nonsense in Piedmont (click).

Do government ministries purposely omit important vineyards from their maps?
 
Years ago it was the premier cote in Vouvray.

Then the Mosel. And Cornas, as noted.

I think there is a general disrespect for agriculture as a subject for preservation. Who preserves a particular wheat field? That's the thinking.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Years ago it was the premier cote in Vouvray.

Then the Mosel. And Cornas, as noted.
Click to expand...
You've left off Montrachet and Côte-Rôtie.

To be fair, predictions of the ruin of Lafite by the Shell Oil refinery erected in the 1960s (and no longer used) proved to be false.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
If I grok it all arights, there was a big presentation to the Transportation Minister last November (click) and some kind of capitulation leading to this announcement in December (click). Note that there is still plenty of contention but I think the Bandol vineyards are safe. [I hope a more-skilled Francophone will double-check me.]

I also discovered more high-speed train nonsense in Piedmont (click).

Do government ministries purposely omit important vineyards from their maps?
Click to expand...

On the basis of the second link, Bandol and also the vineyards to the east of Toulon round Le Muy seem safe. However France has a new government which seems to as a matter of principle to be undoing many of the decisions of the previous.

I don't think that the proposed high speed line between Turin and Lyon via a new Mont Cenis tunnel runs through any outstanding vineyards on the Italian side. I need to look more closely at the proposed route to see if any of the Savoy vineyards on the French side are at risk.
 
originally posted by MarkS:
You would think great vineyards would be protected into law, esp. in Europe, of all places.
Click to expand...
The bureaucratic process to determine what exactly constitutes a "great vineyard" would boggle the mind. I suspect if they started now, they could be done in 40 years.
 
originally posted by Cory Cartwright:
originally posted by MarkS:
You would think great vineyards would be protected into law, esp. in Europe, of all places.
Click to expand...
The bureaucratic process to determine what exactly constitutes a "great vineyard" would boggle the mind. I suspect if they started now, they could be done in 40 years.
Click to expand...

In before fb and 'modern viticultural practices'.
 
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