Vino vigilantes seeing red over foreign imports dumped giant vats of wine into French streets this week in protest.
The latest stunt by the so-called “wine terrorists” was Tuesday, when hundreds of gallons flooded an entire block in the Mediterranean port of Sète in southeast France, according to the Telegraph.
The wine had been swiped from a local merchant whose shop is on the street, but police refused to say how it had been accessed.
Local media reports that a group called Comité d’Action Viticole, or Wine Action Committee, was likely responsible.
The group, around since 1970, is believed to be composed of French vintners hellbent on protecting their local produce from foreign imports, the Telegraph reports.
The group is believed to be behind an attack in April, in which five tankers full of Spanish wine were hijacked on the border between Spain and France, and later drained to protest “unfair competition.”
An estimated 90,000 bottles of red and white were lost as a result.
The group has also been accused of dynamiting government buildings and hijacking tankers of foreign wine.
Despite the efforts, data shows that France is currently the biggest buyer of Spanish wine — importing more than 10 billion gallons in Languedoc-Roussillon in 2014 alone.
The leader of Comité d’Action Viticole is believed to be a man named Jean Vialade, who has become a hotshot in the French wine industry thanks to his vino-related exploits — some of which were praised by former Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy.
According to the Telegraph, the “Mad Dog of the Middle East” once even offered him a whopping $50 million in military training to “overthrow the French government.”