Once dismissed by wine snobs as a lightweight plonk for a summer picnic, rosé wine is enjoying a world revival: French wine critics love it, the British market is booming and more French people now buy rosé than white wine. But the success has been soured by a bitter row in Brussels as the European Commission plans to loosen the strict rules on how the distinctive pink wine can be made.

In Provence - where rosé is as important to the region's glitzy image as the Cannes film festival and St Tropez - winemakers are up in arms and warning that the whole art-de-vivre and economy of the south of France is under threat from the European Commission's proposal to allow producers in all member states to make rosé by simply mixing red and white wine.

In Europe methods of making rosé are strictly regulated: it is produced from black grapes only, using a complex method in which the grape skins mingle with the juice for only a few hours until the right pink hue is achieved.

In France, the world's biggest rosé producer, mixing red and white is seen as heresy that risks flooding the market with cheap wine, wrecking consumers' palletes and killing the established industry.

"We're shocked, angry and worried," said Jean-Jacques Breban, president of the Provence winegrowers' association. The region is the biggest rosé-producer in France.

"If the rules change, we won't be able to compete with our traditional methods, our industry will die and the Provence economy will be devastated. If tens of thousands of wine-growers are forced out of business, swaths of landscape could see vines pulled up and destroyed. It will change our region forever."

The Provence rosé-producers have lobbied the French government prior to the commission's final ruling next month. They said if necessary they would organise demonstrations. The government wants to avoid more protests by its beleagured wine industry which has seen troubled Languedoc Roussillon wine-growers resort to terrorism. The champagne industry has taken legal action to protect its unique right to used the word "champagne".

The commission argues that the technique of mixing red with white to get rosé is authorised across the world from Australia to America, and European producers should be able to compete. But the technique remains extremely rare.

A matter of quality

For the winemakers of Provence, allowing producers to blend red and white wines will have them choking on their bouillabaisse. Why should blending matter? The answer is rooted in character and quality. At its dry best, rosé combines cool refreshment with a delicate, tangy hint of a red. Blending wines rather than allowing brief, gentle contact between pressed juice and the skins of red grapes to extract rosé colour and character, isn't the same thing at all.

Cynics might argue that the Provencals can keep producing rosé in the time-honoured way and allow others to satisfy growing demand with an easing of tiresome restrictions. But quality would almost invariably suffer as cheap blends flooded the market. It would be a shame if Brussels played into the hands of purveyors of mass pink plonk rather than sustaining a style of wine that traces its roots back 26 centuries to the Phoenicians who brought their vines to France. Andrew Catchpole

• This article was amended on Wednesday 18 March 2009. Homophone corner: "In France ... mixing red and white is seen as heresy that risks flooding the market with cheap wine, wrecking consumers' pallets ..." This has been changed.