August 5th, 2009. Letter for InterLoire.

Madam,

The InterLoire, through your debt collection agency, requires from myself the payment of contributions. The strategy set by this organisation is in the continuity of a global action started 15 years ago and which gradually removes from the Vineyard of the country of Nantes, from its wines and mainly from its Muscadet wine, their whole identity which has been built up for generations and generations and which leans on 1200 years of History. As inhabitants of the “Pays de Nantes”, our belonging to Brittany for 12 centuries long represents an exceptional case in Europe with this very long geopolitical stability.

What made the wealth of the wine growers of Pays de Nantes and of their Trade houses is their ability to export towards Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavians countries. The esteem of these countries for our wines was connected as much to the positive image of Brittany, a Celtic country, as to its identity of marine wine linked to the Ocean.

The "Celtic Wine of Brittany", through and away from Europe, targets a potential market of 140 million Celt people in the world. I cannot develop more these arguments in this letter but any serious study would show that the act of purchase, being linked to a feeling of membership, is very strong and that the Breton and Celtic image contributed to our success.

The effects of this identity uprooting are dramatic. The “Loire valley” (Val de Loire), cradle of the kings of France, has its own History and a well defined geographical demarcation and it is relevant that the concerned Vineyards play this card by leaning on the recognition by the UNESCO of this "World Heritage" of the Loire valley.

It is quite otherwise for the Vineyard of Nantes, which is a part of Nantes country, one of the 9 regions of Brittany as the 9 black and white strips on the Breton flag prouve it.

Would “Bourgogne” (Burgundy wine) accept to become "Vin du Centre" (Wine of the Center)? “Alsace” wines "Wines of the Rhine"? Certainly not, we do not break an image and an identity which are connected to centuries of History.

In the Vineyard of Pays de Nantes, it is bound one of these days that the people in charge of this immense mess will have to be accountable. This strategy drove us alternately to suicidal campaigns of pub on the wine about open-air dance hall (guinguette); the boater hat of a of an accordion music (musette) culture, foreign to our region, pulled us down in the slums of the most down-market conceivable production, eradicated our Atlantic Vineyards to make them a continental Vineyards of a foreign region – although a not less respectable one – but which has absolutely nothing connected to the Armorican geologoical Massif, nothing to see with the iodized oceanic climate, or with the slightly acid ground consisting of gneiss, granit, mica-schist and even less to see with several thousand-year-old Brittany, one of the strongest identities of Europe with Scotland, Alsace, the Basque country, Catalonia…

What an unforgivable waste when one looks at the saddening sight of these beautiful wine estates in big difficulty, these beautiful trade houses disappeared, these passionate Wine growers of the Pays de Nantes, creating wines of exception, but obliged to reconvert…

The collusion between professional and political people in charge, who broke, « killed » all which is Breton in Loire-Atlantique, has for result this "sad plain of distress" as a title by a Belgian firm.

The success of the association "Produit en Bretagne" – 210 firms and 100 000 jobs – should enlighten the confused spirit of far too many people in this country. It is time that we stop being lied to – and this since primary school – about who we are. If we do not know any more where from we come, we shall not know where we go. We [we, Breton in Loire-Atlantique, ndt] undergo a real lobotomy and some ones, as zombies, agree to make a fool of themselves in accepting a substituted identity, like “Ligérians” [from latin Liger for Loire, ndt], why not “bonariens” (good to nothing), “ouestitis” [ = “from the West” mixed with “ouistiti”, French for marmoset, ndt], or “Center-Atlanticans”, as dark-minded persons had wanted to disgustingly name us some time ago in wanting to create a “Center Atlantic” geographical space? Everything and anything, isn't it? So long as « you forget you are Breton »?

InterLoire is thus involved in this global strategy of negation of our bretonship but, as the old slaves of the negritude, we fiercely raise our head and, just like Aimé Césaire, we say that Man, like all the botanical and animal species in the world, must be respected. The violence that we get emerges from the political responsibility of the State. If the State gives his backing to this undermining of democracy, he will have to assume the consequences. If a Brittany, divided in its territory and weakened, is in the will of the State, let him have the courage to recognize it. As for us, the inhabitants of the Pays de Nantes, let us be aware that our uprooting is harmful to our economy. Others than me have proved the positive correlation between identity and economy.

You will thus understand, Madam, that I present you a firm refusal of these payments. I refuse to answer for this strategy of death as 15 years ago already, when I wrote about "the scheduled bankruptcy of Muscadet wine" by denouncing the schemes of some ones who sabotaged decades of success.

As Mr Verlynde, the former mayor of La Haye-Fouassière, said: "Anjou and Muscadet are both very good wines but you do not drink them in the same glass." Beautiful image which meant: they are too different to be gathered.

I thank you for passing on this letter to your customer InterLoire and may you receive, Madam, my best salutations.

Alan Coraud
(Wine growing estate Mill of Sainte-Catherine)
Domaine Viticole Moulin de Sainte-Catherine
F-44430 La Remaudière

Alan-Erwan Coraud is Mayor of La Remaudière in Loire-Atlantique since 2008
Vice-president of the C C L D (Association of Local Communities of the Loire-Divatte). The Divatte is a small river, part of which flows along the border line between Brittany and Anjou, or between Loire-Atlantique and Maine-et Loire departments.

( voir notre article ) in French. Translation Maryvonne Cadiou.