PARIS, March 3 (Reuters) - France said on Wednesday it was ready to review advertising restrictions on wine producers to encourage the French to drink the industry out of a sales slump.

A bastion of French life which provides 75,000 jobs, the wine sector has been hit by competition from cheap new world rivals and a change in drinking habits in a nation which is becoming increasingly health-conscious.

Farm Minister Herve Gaymard said it was time to review the 1991 "Evin Law" banning wine advertising on television and at sports events, but he insisted any loosening must be backed up by a campaign to promote drinking in moderation.

"Our message is one of moderation not prohibition," Gaymard said after a debate in Paris with hundreds of wine producers and parliamentarians representing France's main wine regions.

"The spirit of the law is not in question...but it is true that after 13 years it needs to be looked at again. There are a number of legal problems with it," he told reporters.

He said working groups involving lawmakers and winemakers had been asked to make recommendations on what to do by June 15.

Despite intense pressure from the industry, the conservative government has been reluctant to review the law for fear of checking a recent downward trend in drunk-driving road deaths.

But Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin hinted last week the government was ready to budge, saying the sector needed more scope to improve its marketing. He denied the shift was a bid to win votes ahead of regional elections later this month.

French wine exports fell 3.4 percent last year, hit by factors such as France's row with the United States over the Iraq war and the rise in the euro against the dollar, which made its products more expensive abroad.

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n a wider cultural shift, wine is no longer the automatic drink of choice of many French. Producers put consumption at 58 litres per head in 2002 against 100 litres in the early 1960s.

"We have to return wine to its place in society -- to be drunk with food, with discernment," said Alain Suguenot, deputy for Cote d'Or in the Burgundy wine producing region.

"It has nothing to do with the cliche of Friday or Saturday drinking in northern European countries," he said of "binge drinkers" who are rarely seen in French bars or streets.

However others have noted that until recently, drink-driving was not a taboo in France as it is in other European countries.

Bordeaux mayor and ex-Prime Minister Alain Juppe has called for wine to be exempt from the Evin law because the European Union classifies it as an agricultural product.

Other suggestions involve making the ban apply only to spirits with an alcoholic content above 18 percent.