European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 24, 1958, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Rich French vineyards cover on fourteenth of normally yield a billion Harvest Outlook for the 1958 Vintage French wines is not the but is expected to be better than 1957 by Don staff writer its Harvest time in France in the vineyards from Sierck lesbians in the Moselle to Emilion in the prospects Are dim for a bumper and there is no expectation for a year of outstanding it is still too Early to give definite estimates on but favourable or not the air of anxiety that annually comes Over Rural France when the Van Dang is on in october is once again Only in a Square lock area of Paris Montmartre has the Harvest this Frances smallest and most northwesterly and the done by the Gaines of who Are called is today Only for show and to up elsewhere in franc the Harvest is serious although the major wine towns stage a wine festival or two to celebrate the Climax of the years despite a summer hailstorm that destroyed nearly ail the tile roofs in Stras the alsatian look Forward to a Good pickers Are hard at work around and the districts that produce Frances prize riesling and the bad weather fortunately bypassed the Best of the the Story m Bordeaux is not so cheer because nature was less kind the deep red Dareau of Pomeroy and entered eur mers labelled 1958 will probably Lack their Normal full the Farmers the medic near Bordeaux the District which some experts believe produces the greatest wines in the has been affected by an abnormally late season that causes Noble a degree of Overma purity desired for some Sweet but not a characteristic of a Good table up and Down the Loire that cradles the Pouilly and mus Cadet reports Ary from inferior to aver age yields end qualities this season again the result of unstable weather that has plagued France most of the Burgundy and the most popular names in French wines because they Are will be in Normal Supply this but this is never and it int the fault of the most for although familiar with the do not realize that Burgundy and Btu Jolais vineyards cover less acres and that the annual production of unmixed varieties could not possibly Supply even the needs of Paris for one by French Law the these two entering around Dijon and can be listed on the labels of bottles con Taining mixtures of Beaujolais or Burgundy and usually from the of 12 it is this Southern the extending from Marseille to sete along the Mediterranean that produces the great bulk of Frances wine ruined last year by the the 1958 prospects Are a near Normal yield is expected if conditions remain unchanged until Harvest starts at the end of the before last years crop failure the South Ern vintners were troubled by the misery of the full an overabundance of wine that drove prices this years Normal crop will not yet bring stocks Back to surplus no world famed names in wine come from the Little of it is classified by name or and most of it is consumed the same year it is the Midi annually supplies nine tenths of Frances which ranges from 35 to 50 million All the Outlook is a bit brighter than in when Frances grape Harvest was Only 50 per cent of whatever the the Harvest is symbolic of agricultural Frances abundance and Rich it is in fact a mainstay of the nations and a few calculated from average statistics of the past will illustrate France produces 60 per cent of the world but in the past two years this still is not enough for local consume it is supplemented by imports from Spain and annual per Cap Ita consumption ranges from 35 to 40 Gal the wine Industry supports roughly on tenth of Frances earning approximately in a Normal on fourteenth of the country sur face is covered with an increase in the Price of wine always Worth a Banner headline in French like the Price of wine prices Are barometers indicating trends in household the French Treasury annually receives about million in taxes on the Harvest follows the Samu pattern in most areas of in the Moselle Val where a Large part of the crop is sent to the Saar for use in making sparkling the women pick the grapes while their husbands work in the Lorraine mines or the factories in the Industrial District North of in the Loire the vendange is a family to produce the Youv rays of the Tours area or the Pink Anjou from Saumur to picking has to be done on time so that the grapes Are not ruining distinctive flavor and what takes place once the grapes have been picket is another in the Midi the wholesale production is a matter of with great aging vats and processing machinery set up in centralized cooperative from these the pm Ordi Naire is trans ported to till parts of usually in tankers that look exactly like Petroleum individual care goes into the High Quality Bordeaux and Burgundy generally bottled in Small lots at the Chateaux of the Vineyard the wine of the Rhone Champagne and Alsace is far from being Ordi Naire but the Farmers do not usually bottle the wine on their own the grapes in these regions also go to except shipped to where merchants bottle it at the great Bercy wine docks and warehouses on the the 1958 Harvest is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the annual Occa Sion in phoenicians who founded Marseille in about 600 found grapes growing soon began to cultivate them in from then on the vineyards spread across France to All regions except the Highlands and the humid Plains of the North and where Beer and Cal Vados reign As the regional French wine production reached its Peak during the 19th according to Andre worlds leading wine expert and author of More than 60 books on the More and finer wines were made in France than had Ever been made in the world before or it was also a Century when huge Cash outlays went into the improvement of some of the richest families of the old As Well As Paris business International Bankers and wealthy bought up the old Chateaux and their domains and refurnished then disaster for 20 years after 1870 the phylloxera a Vine ruined every Vineyard in first reported at botanical gardens near London from a parcel of american vines sent across the Atlantic As the Louse spread to the Bordeaux then to the vineyards of Burgundy and Cham and eventually to All the continent it was the same vines from the that originally had caused the calamity that at the turn of the Cen Tury saved the French wine Industry from nearly immune to phylloxera through centuries of Contact with the that attacked at the Root the american species were planted in to these roots Sau Vignon and other native French species were France regained its place As the Landof the great wines when millions of acres of new franc american vines again began to vineyards along the Moses bad Durkheim supervisor the stars and stripes