Summary
Rotten Season 2 Episode 2, “Reign of Terror” provides insight into wine producers in the South of France fighting for survival in many more ways than one.
This recap of Netflix Series Rotten Season 2 Episode 2, “Reign of Terror” contains spoilers. You can read the recap of the previous episode by clicking these words.
I’ll tell you what gives me terrible hangovers — wine, especially red. I always make the mistake of drinking a few glasses if I’m out on a meal, and then I wake up the next day wondering why I never learn. The same mistake when I eat too many jalapenos on a pizza. It’s insanity making the same mistake over and over again.
Anyway, another chapter and another subject matter, and like the previous episode where Rotten discussed avocados, wine is a competitive commodity in the South of France. I’m hardly surprised, as the French are known to be wine connoisseurs, but once again, the Netflix docuseries opened my eyes wider on the supply and consumption of a drink we take for granted.
Episode 2 discusses at length the damage caused by CRAV (Comité Régional d’Action Viticole) a militant group of wine producers who believe they have been plagued by surplus production. Their main gripe involves the single market and a cry for stricter, higher tariffs for Spanish and Italian wine imports. It’s all about protecting the culture, their profits and the quantity/quality of the supply. I never thought I’d see a terror attack on a winery and other businesses claimed by a group involving wine. Terrorism can affect any ideology.
And I can see why the issue has been born — if your homeland’s main USP is wine, then the threat of the outside market is undoubtedly going to tempt flames. Violence is not the answer, but tempers continue to flare, and as the docuseries explains, regulations are introduced every year that squeeze the life out of these local wine producers.
Episode 2 discusses labels, and how wine producers have to go to the extremes to stave off competition from the likes of Spain, and new competition China. Spain is mainly discussed at length in “Reign of Terror”; the paranoia of disguised wine coming from Spanish producers plagues the minds of the South of France.
What you will take from Rotten Season 2 Episode 2, “Reign of Terror” is an insight that feels incomprehensible. In 2019, competition should not result in the type of terror that threatens the South of France every year. But then again, I never thought avocados would be a significant war for cartels either.
You can read the recap of the third episode by clicking these words.
