FOR YEARS, France seemed content to sit back and let the quality of wines speak for itself; and for years, slowly but surely, the rest of the world stood up, noisily made its pitch and edged French wine into a smaller share of the market. Now, the French Government has had enough — and it is going to fight back.

By backing a 40 per cent increase in the amount of money spent on promotional activity in Britain, it hopes to give French wine a much- needed, if not a belated, boost. Although France is still the biggest supplier of wine to the UK, importing 2.6 million hectolitres in 2004, it has been overtaken by Australia in sales through off-licences and supermarkets and is only just ahead of the United States.

In an interview with The Times during a promotional trip to London, Christine Lagarde, a foreign trade minister, said that France was determined to regain the off-trade lead that it relinquished two years ago “as soon as possible”.

She said that French winemakers had to learn from the success of their New World counterparts in areas such as labelling and clarity of marketing, but she insisted that the French wine industry was responding vigorously.

Mme Lagarde, who was visiting one of Tesco’s biggest London stores, on the Cromwell Road, said: “The UK is a big market and we are reacting to the market challenges.”

She said that it was important for the French wine industry to adapt, but such changes must not be at the expense of the “pride and heritage” that were such a key element of French winemaking.

According to Sopexa, an organisation set up to champion French food and wine overseas, promotional investment in Britain this year was set to jump by 24 per cent when the Ministry of Agriculture allocated some extra money, taking the cumulative increase to 40 per cent.

Sopexa says that a promotional push in supermarkets between March and July led to an extra 1.8 million bottles of French wine being sold. It estimates that up to ten million extra bottles will be sold during 2005 in the big supermarket and off-licence chain, up 10 per cent.

Tesco, which accounts for 20 per cent of all off-trade wine sold in the UK, said that although French wine sales in its stores had continued to grow “at a steady pace” over the past five years, its share of total sales had reduced.

However, Mark Murphy, Tesco’s director for beer, wines and spirits, said that French wine sales had grown by 17 per cent this year on the back of promotional initiatives and innovation from some suppliers. He highlighted the recent success of JP Chenet, whose quirky, bent-neck bottle and simple labelling has made it the tenth-biggest wine brand in the UK.

Mr Murphy cautioned against simply following what the Australian and American wine industries had done. “It’s not about doing the same as the New World wines and putting a silly name on it. What the French have is some fantastic heritage.”

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