Sacre bleu! French told to cut back … on wine

‘It isn’t alcohol like the others’

FRANCE’S love of wine runs so deep that even government ministers do not consider it to be ‘proper alcohol’.

Children sip it from an early age, and many – including president Emmanuel Macron – still insist on enjoying a bottle with both lunch and dinner.

So it comes as little surprise that an anti-alcohol campaign aimed at limiting consumption to two glasses a day has sparked anger across the Channel.

The Public Health (Sante Publique) France agency has launched advertisements warning that lives are at stake.

‘For your health, alcohol should be limited to a maximum of two glasses per day, and not every day either,’ it advises. It warns that some 25 per cent of French people regularly exceed safe limits, and that many are among the 41,000 who die from alcohol-related causes each year.

But the campaign has left many distinctly unimpressed. Bruno Leclerc, a retired businessman from Paris, said he and his wife got through at least a bottle a day, adding: ‘Such health campaigns always make out that you can live for ever – you can’t, so enjoy life a little bit!’

President Macron admitted last year: ‘Personally, I drink wine at lunch and dinner.

‘There is a public health danger when young people get drunk on strong alcohols or beer, but not with wine.’

And while agriculture minister Didier Guillaume conceded that binge-drinking among the young was an issue, he insisted: ‘Wine isn’t alcohol like the others.’