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Marcel Guigal is worried. every year the celebrated winemaker from the town of Ampuis, near Lyons, ships 27% of his 460,000 cases of Hermitage, Châteauneuf-du-Pape and other appellations to the United States. These days, his importers tell him, much of it is languishing in warehouses, as irate Americans show how they feel about French President Jacques Chirac's stance against the war in Iraq. "Our President is a man with a big heart, and everyone is against war. But France's position against America has been too hard, too cut-and-dried," Guigal says. "We've got to do something to make sure this popular boycott doesn't become a durable sentiment."

So Guigal got on the tgv to Paris last week to meet with representatives from all of France's wine-growing regions, to talk about what can be done to turn the page on this nasty chapter in Franco-American relations. Louis-Fabrice Latour, whose family has exported Burgundy to America since the U.S. Civil War, shared his concerns. "Sales to the States fell between 20% and 30% in March," he says. "It's not just the boycott; we know the dollar's low and people have been spending a lot of time watching television. But I was in the U.S. last week and one of my importers told me it's become politically incorrect to promote French wines."

Since France exports ?1.71 billion in wine and spirits to the U.S. every year — France's most lucrative sector after automotive products and aeronautics — the plummeting sales are no laughing matter. (There has been no drop in sales for champagne or cognac, which aren't as prone to replacement by New World competitors.) No wonder the managing board of the Federation of Wine and Spirits Exporters decided that its president, Patrick Ricard, would write a discreet letter to Chirac this week. "We don't want to get in the debate about politics," says Latour, "just sensitize him to the fact that we're having trouble selling our wine."

Diplomacy, the French like to say, is sovereign; commerce ranks somewhere below. And angry wine merchants alone don't explain why official France is shucking off some of its haughty principles and doing what it can to get back in the fold; the hard reality of the swift Anglo-American victory in Iraq gives it little alternative. Chirac's phone call on Tuesday to Bush — their first conversation since Feb. 7, characterized as "positive" by the Elysée and as "business-like" by the White House — was a station of the cross on that pre-Easter walk to resurrection. "We are keen to avoid further friction," says a senior French Foreign Ministry official. The watchword in Paris seems to have changed from principle to pragmatism.

The first fences to mend are those with some of France's European Union partners. In Athens last week, E.U. leaders offered a picture of comity as they formally signed accession treaties with 10 new members. "There was no crying, no fighting and no hand thumping," marveled European Commission President Romano Prodi. Chirac avoided any echoes of the brusque treatment he meted out in February toward the new members from the former Warsaw Pact. He also had a 25-minute tête-à-tête with Tony Blair. Apart from the still touchy and inchoate issue of the E.U.'s foreign and defense policy, the two have some common ground in pushing for an end to the rotating six-month presidency of the Union, which small states want to preserve. The two also brokered an E.U. declaration calling for "a central role" — Chirac had previously said "the central role" — for the United Nations in Iraq; that appears more compatible with Washington's desire to limit U.N. involvement.

Bush's call last week for a lifting of U.N. sanctions against Iraq was greeted with some consternation at the Quai d'Orsay: officials there had long predicted that the Americans would recognize the need for U.N. action on that front, but hadn't expected Bush to acknowledge it so soon or so imprecisely. It will take some artful diplomacy to finesse an end to the sanctions: the U.N. will have to declare Iraq disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, and a mutually acceptable mechanism for that doesn't yet exist. But France is of no mind to ride its principles into further oblivion. "France never liked the sanctions in the first place," says an official at the French Foreign Ministry. "The idea of us opposing lifting them is a nonstarter." He believes that "at the end of the day, the Americans will come to the position that a U.N. role is needed." But that may be wishful thinking; there is little or no evidence that Washington is moving in that direction — or ever will. Reaching compromise on the U.N.'s role won't be easy, so France is trying to signal its goodwill to the U.S. in other forms — notably in the planning for this June's meeting of the G-8, with France presiding in Evian. One impartial western diplomat involved in that process says the French have been "bending over backward" to accommodate American wishes for the event. They have given the Americans "everything they wanted," right down to a preferred time slot for the arrival of Air Force One and a higher profile for counterterror issues on the summit agenda.

Those relatively painless accommodations hardly signal French contrition, nor are the hawks at the Pentagon willing to offer absolution. France has reacted coolly to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's call that it forgive Iraq's state-to-state debt of some $1.7 billion. And there remains the delicate matter of the American consumer. Ernest-Antoine Seillière, president of the French employers' association medef, suggested last week that businesses shouldn't pay the price for politics. "Send telegrams to our consulates," he counseled angry American consumers. "But don't attack our perfumes, our yogurts and our airplanes."

Guillaume Touton, a French-born wine importer in New York, has gone a step further: direct payments to the Pentagon. Or close to it. A $1 contribution will go toward care packages for American troops in Iraq for every case of French wine he sells, each emblazoned with a sign: "By purchasing this wine, a contribution has been made to our armed forces overseas." Merchants Guigal and Latour think that's a fine idea. But no similarly craven approach is likely to be taken by the French government. Pride has its price, but France is still hoping its dignity isn't part of it.

• JAMES GRAFF/PARIS
• With U.S. boycotts hurting French wine exports, Chirac and winemakers alike are trying to make amends