French prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry following a dramatic explosion in the southern city of Carcassonne this week. The ground floor of a government building used by civil servants was destroyed, as glass windows shattered into hundreds of jagged pieces, and shards of twisted metal flew outside.  

The scene was reminiscent of a war-torn Middle Eastern enclave but there were mercifully no dead or maimed during the nighttime attack, nor were religious fundamentalists suspected of being involved. Instead, as a judicial police investigator in the normally peaceful tourist destination told me, the “highly determined and organised gang” responsible was likely to be involved in the wine trade.

Bizarre as it might sound, terrorism linked to one of France’s most famous rural industries is an abiding problem. It is a perfect example of how extremely violent dissent is as integral to the Gallic psyche as all those other internationally famous icons, including vin rouge itself.

In the Carcassonne case, a group calling itself the Viticultural Action Committee was thought to be responsible. There was no crowing phone call or sinister online message from them, but the letters CAV, for Comité d’Action Viticole, were graffitied twice on a wall close to the blast. 

The calling card name may sound vaguely comical, but the CAV is in fact a deadly serious organisation that during its 117-year history has been linked to multiple bomb and arson attacks, as well as a range of other violent crimes including kidnappings and even the killing of a senior policeman. 

In short, it is typical of the armed extremist organisations that exist in this revolutionary nation, which firmly established terrorism as an effective political strategy at the end of the 18th century. 

The most gruesome elements of the Terror, the horrendous period of bloodletting that followed the creation of the first Republic in 1792, were reflected in methods deployed by the CAV, which first came into being during the fabled winegrowers’ revolt in southern departments in 1907. It was eventually put down by the army, with seven killed and dozens more wounded by cannon fire. 

As today, the wine militants claimed to be defending themselves against a Paris government with little understanding of the problems of the countryside. 

By the 1960s, the CAV became especially extreme. This was a time when even French police and army officers were forming themselves into terrorist groups. Their Secret Army Organisation (OAS) thought nothing of killing and maiming civilians, including children, as they fought against plans to hand Algeria, France’s most prestigious colony, back to its indigenous Arab and Berber inhabitants. 

The letters OAS were regularly scrawled on walls following a lethal night of mayhem involving plastic explosives, gunfire or stabbings. The wine terrorists were far less notorious but the CAV’s own three letters still caused fear and anguish.

Attacks on government buildings, bottling plants and the like were carried out by armed, hooded gang members. After a police commander was shot dead by the CAV in 1976, it went relatively quiet but did not go away. Arms and explosives were stored and an increasing sense of crisis saw the atrocities resume. 

CAV’s principal gripe today is foreign imports, and particularly the kind of cheap wine coming across the border from Spain. The EU is perceived as causing enormous damage along with its French globalist collaborators, including President Emmanuel Macron’s administration. In a separate protest seven years ago, alleged members of CAV went to trial for spilling gallons of Spanish wine in the French countryside, along with other acts of sabotage.

Hence the attack in Carcassonne on the offices of Dreal, the government’s environment, planning and housing directorate in the Aude department. Wine prices are tumbling along with the number of drinkers, and the producers say they are being overwhelmed by red tape as they try to claim subsidies that might help them stay in business. 

There is, of course, no CAV press office, but the rhetoric of wine industry leaders points towards even more turmoil in a country where rioters from the Gilets Jaunes movement were torching government buildings and attacking police in cities including Paris as recently as 2020. 

Frédéric Rouanet, the president of the winegrowers’ union in the Aude, captures France’s eternal conflict between protest and life-threatening terror: “I do not condone violence, but the situation is extremely serious.”

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Peter Allen is a journalist and author based in Paris.

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