The Economist - USA (2019-08-03)

44 Europe The EconomistAugust 3rd 2019

2 Syriza’s rigour, but growth was subdued.

This year’s forecast is around 2%, well be-

low the 3.5-4% needed to make up for the

recession quickly. Greek gdpis still about

25% below its pre-crisis peak.

The new government hopes that politi-

cal stability (thanks to its majority in par-

liament) and business-friendly reforms

(cutting red tape as well as taxes) will at-

tract foreign investment. “Greece will be a

totally new country for business,” prom-

ises Adonis Georgiadis, the minister for de-

velopment and investment. As a sign of

seriousness, he is leading a push to make

sure the long-stalled privatisation of Helli-

nikon, a prime site that used to be Athens’s

airport, gets under way this year.

The government will present a draft

budget in September. Although Greece is

no longer in an official rescue programme,

the budget must be approved by the credi-

tors under the terms of a post-bail-out

“surveillance” agreement. He is betting on

drastic cost-cutting at government minis-

tries to offset immediate revenue reduc-

tions from tax cuts. Good luck with that. 7

P

rincegeorgfriedrichofPrussiais

getting a lesson on how not to get the

public on his side. The great-great-grand-

son of the last Kaiser has been in talks for

years with the federal government, as

well as the state governments of Berlin

and Brandenburg, about the return of

possessions expropriated by the Rus-

sians at the end of the second world war.

A letter from his lawyer to the authorities

has now been leaked to the press, pro-

voking a vehement backlash against

Wilhelm II’s Hohenzollern dynasty and

its alleged support for the Nazis.

The document reveals that the prince

wants compensation of at least €1.2m

($1.3m), the right to live rent-free at

Cecilienhof (the palace where American,

British and Russian leaders held the 1945

Potsdamconferencethatsettledthe

post-warorder),aswellaspaintings,

sculptures,books,letters,photographs

andmedalsfromvariousHohenzollern

houses.Therequestedinventoryin-

cludesCranachpaintingsandthearm-

chairinwhichFredericktheGreatdied.

Theprincewasperhapsnaivein

thinkingtheletterwouldremainconfi-

dentialinBrandenburg,a stateruledbya

coalitionofSocialDemocratsandDie

Linke,anex-communistparty,whichis

preparingforhotlycontestedstateelec-

tions.ThepublicreactedwithJacobin

fury.“Thearistocracyisnotnoble,but

evil,”fumedTomasFitzelofRundfunk

Berlin-Brandenburg,a localradiosta-

tion.Thearistocracyrobbedandextorted

forcenturies,tweetedKathrinVogler,an

mpforDieLinke,addingthataristocrats

areluckyGermanyisnotFrance.

Like all families whose property was

confiscated by the Russians and eastern

Germany’s communist regime, the Ho-

henzollerns cannot claim their houses

back. Yet according to legislation passed

in 1994, they are entitled to restitution of

mobile property, as well as the payment

of compensation. The only exceptions

are families that actively supported the

Nazi regime. This is the sticking-point.

If the case goes to the courts it will not

be pretty. Prince Wilhelm, the son of the

last Kaiser, has been called a mouthpiece

for Nazi propaganda. His brother August

Wilhelm was a fervent Nazi. All parties

are still hoping for a settlement out of

court. It is very much in the prince’s

interest to make it happen.

Jacobinfury

Hohenzollerns in hot water

BERLIN

The backlash against the Kaiser’s family’s claims for property restitution

Theytookitallaway

“T

here is morephilosophy in a bottle

of wine than in all the books in the

world,” said Louis Pasteur, a 19th-century

French chemist. For the French, wine is not

just a drink or source of alcohol: it is a mark

of civilisation, a subject of scholarship, a

way of life. So why in the land of fine wines

is rosé, the industry’s poor cousin, enjoy-

ing such a boom?

On the slopes of a forested hillside close

to Mont Ventoux, the Domaine de la Ver-

rière is one of the highest vineyards in Pro-

vence. Among the Chêne Bleu wines it pro-

duces, predominantly from hand-picked

grenache and syrah, is a premium organic

rosé. By July this year, for the first time, the

estate had sold out of last year’s vintage.

“Our rosé sales are now constrained by sup-

ply,” says Danielle Rolet, whose family

owns the vineyard.

France is both the world’s biggest pro-

ducer and consumer of rosé wine, a pale

pink blend that snobs have traditionally

scorned. In the second half of 2018 super-

market sales of red in France fell by 5% on

the same period the previous year, and

white was flat. Yet rosé sales were up by 6%.

Why the French craze for rosé? One an-

swer is the change in diets. In recent years

even the French have begun to eat less

steak and other red meat, which they tradi-

tionally accompany with red. As a sim-

pler—and, the purists would say, blander—

wine, rosé is seen as a lighter drink, partic-

ularly when chilled in summer. It is

especially popular among the under-25s,

the age group most likely to be vegetarian,

according to the Organisation Internation-

ale de la Vigne et du Vin.

A second, and perhaps more surprising,

reason is the emergence of winemakers

seeking to take rosé upmarket. A bottle of

top-end Garrus rosé from the Château d’Es-

clans, a Provençal wine estate, for instance,

sells at an improbable €100 ($110). Such

wines, or so their producers hope, are help-

ing to lend rosé the cachet it has lacked un-

til now. “From the start, we wanted to make

a more complex, structured, serious rosé,”

says Ms Rolet; “Now, almost unexpectedly,

we find that it’s through our rosé that peo-

ple find us.”

And then there is the celebrity image.

Almost all the Côtes de Provence wines,

made along France’s Mediterranean fringe,

are rosés. For millennials, the pale pink

hue, backlit by sun, is considered highly

“Instagrammable”. “It’s a fashion that has

come up from Saint-Tropez,” says a wine-

maker farther inland, dismissively. Brad

Pitt and Angelina Jolie own the Château de

Miraval in Provence, which produces a pre-

mium rosé. Other aspirational brands,

such as Minuty, are popular—often by the

magnum—on the yachts and in the beach

clubs of the Riviera. Such bottles sell not so

much a pale pink liquor as a glamorous

lifestyle fantasy. The promise, as it were, of

la vie en rosé—to which even the French, it

seems, are not immune. 7

CRESTET

Even France is learning to drink pink

Wine in France

The rise of rosé