I continue to hear over and over that wine consumers aretrading down – that is, we may not be buying less wine necessarily, but we arebuying less expensive wines. And because I am Bordeaux-centric I hear a lot of other stufftoo; like French wine has been shoved off the gallows, hit the end of its rope,and will soon die off completely. A statement like that is truly beyond theimagination and I am appalled that any writer with even a grape seed ofintegrity would produce such sensationalistic rubbish, or junk, if you will. This postulate comesfrom the wine writer for Slate.com. Like nearly every other wine region in theworld, the state of the French wine industry is undeniably in decline butcenturies of masterfully producing much of the world’s best wine will notdisappear.

Sure there are other wine producing countries doing greatthings with wine, even at a value price-point, but it still is not what the French can do with wine.What will happen I believe is that the wine market in general will get rid of alot of junk itdoesn’t need. Consider this market correction an industry-wide garage salewhere all needless things are sold off for pennies on the dollar or taken tothe curb in a trash bin.

The other thing is this: I hear people slam French wine as‘not being very good’. When I dig down a little deeper the mystery is quicklysolved with one question: “Well, what did you pay for this wine you arepummeling into the dirt?” Inevitably, the answer is less than $15 or $20dollars! Then realistically, what can be expected from a French wine at thisprice point? Imagine a wine that is produced in France, sold to a nêgociant,who ships it across the ocean in temperature controlled containers to a USimporter, who sells it to a distributor, who sells to a retailer, who sells itto you. At best, the original wine producer received a couple of dollars perbottle but probably far less. Although there are French values out there, $15or $20 is not setting the bar very high when considering all of the channels itmust go through to end up in your glass. Perhaps more than any other wineregion, you pretty much get what you pay for when it comes to French wine sothe expectation must be adjusted accordingly.

Current Bordeaux International Wine Institute data revealsthere are nearly 14,000 wine producers in Bordeaux alone compared to the US,which in 2007 had about 6000 wineries (half of which are in California). Thisis a huge number by any measure. The 2005 vintage produced 950,000,000 bottlesof Bordeaux but how many of those bottles could really be of much quality? Yesdear friends, it is true and for many reasons, there is junk at every corner whether it’s from France, Italy,Spain, Australia, or the US. In fact, being generous I would consider maybe 10%of the world’s wines to be of drinkable quality.

 So the question is this: how do you find wine that will notdisappoint? How do you know what is junk and what’s not, before you buy? I have some methods I willpost here in Part 2 (2ème Partie) that answers those questions – stay tuned.

David Boyer