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It amazes me that the whole French winemaking industry totally misses the point...
1.They produce and have the potential to produce some of the best wines in the world. The good wines have absolutely no problem selling and the great wines command huge prices and sell out quickly. Subsidies and ripping out vineyards is absurd, what they need is a massive move towards producing better quality wine. Lower yields, better vineyard management, and good winemaking.
{mosgoogle}
They think they are doing this and have tasting panels to judge if a wine is up to standard, but the tasters are all local producers who are not representative or expert and have huge vested interest, and then the post tasting controls over what goes in the bottle are lax in the extreem ,so the whole process is a farce. The vignerons and others all complain about the Appellation constraints, and lack of profitability, and expect huge subsidies to prop them up. The French government generally ,after a riot or two, gives in, so nothing changes!
2. They need to identify what consumers want, and then start marketing the wines properly . When was the last or even first time anyone saw good ordinary Bordeaux Rouge promoted at a good accessible price in a supermarket? Bordeaux, and many good Languedoc wines are unique and are particularly good with food. Unlike big over alcholic fruit dominant wines from many, many parts of the world, which are for most youngsters fine, but for regular wine drinkers boring. Who can tell where a Cabernet Sauvignon in the $5 to $10 dollar range comes from these days, it could be Australia, Argentina, California, Chile, South Africa etc. they all taste the same.
The French must market the uniqueness of their wines. I can increasingly see younger drinkers having no understanding of what interesting wine is all about. Much of what they get to drink is a sort of formulaic recipe, a consistant brand of wine type, a sort of Coca Cola or Budwieser of the wine world. The French can't be helped. They need to wake up to the World around them and face up to competition, and sort it out themselves. Better, unique wine properly promoted will do it for them.
Vive la differance! CB
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