French Winemaking Enters the 21st Century

Following up on Thibaut’s recents posts concerning French consumption, I wanted to share my thoughts on France’s recently-released five year plan. This plan is designed to bring France into line with the EU Department of Agriculture’s new plan for wine addressing globalization and it new challenges. While Decanter and a few other press have summarized the plan, with Thibaut we have the opportunity to review the full plan, and that’s exactly what we did. Below is his summary of the changes that will be implemented, followed by my thoughts.  

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French youth giving up on France's favorite past-time? (Part II)

Yesterday I discussed an article reporting on a study concerning a potential change in wine consumption among French youth. While I argued that the study itself is flawed, it does present at least one interesting conclusion: that young French found wine “confusing and old-fashioned.” How is that possible? More importantly, how is it, even possible that wine is on the decline in France while on the rise in the U.S.? I believe there are two reasons: marketing – differences in how each country markets wine, and a shift in cultures.

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French youth giving up on France's favorite past-time?

After reviewing the latest wine news on Decanter.com, I wanted to react to an article I read about how “Young French view wine as ‘expensive and old fashioned.’” As a 26 years-old Frenchman, who spent time as a student living in the US, I may have an interesting point on the subject of this article.

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Loire Valley Wines Tasting

Monday, I had the opportunity to taste over 100 different wines from the Loire Valley – an often overlooked French wine region that produces a variety of excellent wines, from the standard red and white to rosé, sparkling and sweet wines.

 

The Loire Valley

The third largest French wine region, the Loire follows the 630 mile Loire River from central France west to Brittany where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. The river, itself, begins its life in the volcanic mountains of the Massif Central, it flows through rolling farmland towards the green pastures of Touraine and Anjou before widening and flowing across the flat plains of the Nantes countryside. The nickname Jardin de la France or the Garden of France beautifully describes the luxuriant green countryside.

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2008 Spring Tasting

“March Madness” does not only refer to the NCAA Tournament coverage but also describes the month’s tasting schedule. After attending Italian Wines 2008, I had the opportunity to taste a number of really good wines at another spring tasting last week.

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Fire up the grill?

Some may say it’s too early to start thinking about grill food, but I disagree.  For the second weekend in as many weeks I found myself standing outside inhaling the sweet smells of meat cooking over hot coals. Before you assume it was warm out, it wasn’t, the first was out on Long Island (New York) and the second was yesterday in Maine, hardly known for its warm and inviting springs.  

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The Gambero Rosso's Italian Wines 2008 Tasting NYC

I had the good fortune of attending Italian Wines 2008, an annual tasting featuring the Gambero Rosso’s top wines from their latest wine guide. Snooth’s blog has an interesting take on the tasting, though the author did not attend this year, and I agree with some, but not all of what he wrote.

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The Dastardly Dollar

We’ve had a number of small tasting so far this year, and a few larger events, but the majority of our tastings will take place in the coming weeks culminating in the annual pilgrimage to Verona for Vinitaly. Over the past few months, however, as we have tasted wines from around the world, there has been a noticeable increase in the cost of the wines.

When we taste, we attempt to consider each wine based on its merits, whether the tasting is blind or in arranged flights. Only after a wine has been tasted and discussed do we reference the price of the wine, and increasingly we are finding wines that are good, but not at the prices we would have to sell them at. 

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The aftermath of the Wine.com sting, and new hope for shipping to Maryland

There has been extensive, and at times vitriolic debate over Wine.com’s sting operation as they sought to get other retailers to ship to them illegally and report those shipments to state authorities. I’m not going to get into the debate, but if you would like to read more, you can find all you ever wanted to know about the subject, and more, here in a Vinography post.

While most of the comments have centered around the shock and dismay on the part of retailers and consumers alike, who see Wine.com’s actions as a betrayal, I think the benefits of their actions have been largely ignored.

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Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux - 2005 Vintage Tasting

One of the most common responses when I tell people what I do is a sarcastic, “that must be tough.” They are, of course, referring to the fact that I get to try so many new and interesting wines, and I certainly feel fortunate. Each tasting is an opportunity to try new wines, to gain experience tasting and, in some extremely lucky instances, to taste some of the world’s best wines.

These tastings are, however, not without their challenges, and a perfect example is the tasting I went to yesterday, the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux’s 2005 Vintage Tasting. This tasting, like the Gambero Rosso tasting later in the spring, offers probably the highest proportion of fantastic wines – pretty much all of them. With a list of Châteaux that includes: Angélus, Beau-Séjour Bécot, Berliquet, Canon-la-Gaffelière, Kirwan, Léoville barton, Baraire-Ducru, Beychevelle, Lynch-Bages, and Pichon-Longueville to name a few, it is easy to see why this event is so popular.

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