France, like other European countries, is trying to work out how to best deal with teenage binge drinking and the latest advice from the experts is to offer wine tasting courses. Britain’s Guardian turned this into headline news, while France’s Le Monde relegated it to a small mention at the end of an article about recommendations for improving university student eating habits and TF1 television notes mainly that the authors regret that a glass of wine at lunchtime has virtually disappeared from the students’ menu.

An Irish Times article in February noted that the French have yet to come up with a term for binge drinking.

Cultural differences are alive and well in the European Union.

Winemakers in France aren’t alone in arguing that educating young people about moderate consumption of alcohol is the secret, and that teaching them to appreciate wine in the broadest sense will help. I was told the same thing recently by Daniel Dufaux, head of the Swiss oenologists union.

But French officials have startled their European counterparts by suggesting that universities should offer wine tastings at lunchtime, to teach young people to appreciate wine. Valérie Pécresse, the minister for higher education who ordered the report on how to improve university canteens, reacted to the report she had commissioned by saying “Yes to wine education, no to wine courses at noon” so it doesn’t look like this suggestion will be implemented.

Wine courses are a great way to learn about the value and pleasure of moderate drinking even if you don’t equate it with sex, as one French gastronome did in commenting on the report (okay, he actually said “l’amour” which you can interpret as sex or love). But would this work? Maybe in France, where wine = culture = nous, les Francais. You can’t separate French wine from the country’s cultural heritage, and pride in that still runs very deep in France.

But few people appreciate wine until they are in their mid-twenties, according to several people in the industry. For months I’ve been asking: when is the best time to learn about wine, and how? Daniel Dufaux would like to see school history and science courses include more on the role of grape growing and winemaking in agriculture and in land dvelopment, for example. He would like to see schools encourage students, perhaps in science or health courses, to learn to develop their sense of smell through tasting sessions, which don’t necessarily need to include wine-tasting.

Francois Murisier, the new president of Vinea, told me last summer that young people outside the wine profession are rarely ready to fully appreciate wine before their early to mid-twenties. But if as children they have learned to appreciate the context, by hiking near vineyards, for example, by learning to appreciate different kinds of grapes, by seeing adults drink moderately and enjoying wine, their interest will suddenly come to life.

And if they are lucky enough to learn about wine then, while they are young so that they develop a nose for it, they are more likely to be moderate drinkers.