(Telegraph) - A wine war has erupted in southwestern France where angry claims of fraud and skulduggery involving "foreign" grapes have boiled over into violent action in the summer sun.

Staff at the Jean Gleizes domain in central Ouveillan, outside Narbonne are still in shock after the wine domain's tasting cellar was set ablaze by unknown assailants earlier this month, leaving it in ruins.

When the owner arrived, the charred wooden shutters were still smoldering and the words "bandit", "fraud" and the initials CAV were scrawled onto the hot stone walls.

"It was very violent," said one staff member and assistant to wine maker and owner Pierre-Philippe Callegarin. "I'll never forget it."

The Comité d'Action Viticole (Wine Action Committee), a shadowy group of "wine terrorists" bent on militant action to protect local produce, had struck again.

An omerta surrounds the group, which has been active since 1970 in France's biggest wine growing region, now called Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi- Pyrénées.

The organisation's late co-founder, Jean Vialade  was so notorious at one point that Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator, allegedly sent a delegation to offer him $50 million and military training to "overthrow the French government".

He is said to have declined the offer because he wished to focus on improving the lot of local wine growers, not on "overthrowing the French Republic".