(VinePair) - You raise a glass of French wine and you think of the winemaker. You probably imagine someone with sun-soaked wrinkles, his hands as knotty as the vines he tends, sort of a knowing Mother Earth look about him. Maybe you picture him walking the vineyard, gently grazing his thick, worn knuckles against tender green leaves, cupping a cluster of violet-purple grapes, thinking of the vintage to come. Everything’s gorgeous. The sun is shining. He’s fine. You’re fine. You take a sip of his wine and he leaves his vineyard to go set an importer’s office on fire.

He is not fine. He’s a member of the Comité Régional d’Action Viticole. Also known as CRAV. A Languedoc-based French wine terrorism organization. Yes, there is absolutely such a thing.

They’re typically called “extremists,” and we say “typically” because they’ve been around for over 40 years, busting everyone’s idealized concept of the bucolic life of a French winemaker. And busting windows. And walls. Setting offices on fire and threatening the lives of industry professionals. So why aren’t you hearing more about them?

Fair to admit, there are far more threatening, depressingly more consistent kinds of terrorism to think about these days. But in the context of the wine world, CRAV is a standout: a radical fist of fury in an industry suffused with ridiculous stereotypes of gentility, almost culturally stiff with politeness. Where did CRAV come from?

In a way, they grew themselves. Or rather they grew out of their own traditions. Winemaking was perfected by the French, and gently — then aggressively — exported to other countries. Countries like Spain, which directly borders the Languedoc-Roussillon region and produces cheaper wine. And that’s the main problem, the reason for CRAV’s existence: cheap, imported, typically Spanish wine. The kind of wine the rest of us buy thoughtlessly. The kind of wine we chug after a long day without checking for notes of cassis or tannin levels. The kind of wine CRAV would dump 90,000 bottles of — because it isn’t homemade.

Yes, to the wine-thirsty it seems like a senseless waste. Except the Languedoc-Roussillon region was once known for supplying the country with that kind of wine — easy-drinking “vin de table.” The region became an essential source for it, and generations of winemakers grew up in the area, supplying that need. But since the 1970s, with ebbs and flows, France has been importing bulk table wine from Spain, Italy, and the New World, supplanting the need for anything homegrown and, incidentally, supplanting the livelihoods of its own winemakers.