I'll be the first to admit not caring much for Chirac's France, and even avoiding French products when convenient to do so. Still, I love wine, and my heart can't help heaving a huge, sad sigh at the plight of the French Wine industry.

Chateau-Neuf du Pape still remains one of my favorite "whenever" wines, and I have fond memories of touring the vineyard when I was in Avingnon over a decade ago.

...to hear that they are actually pulling up thousands of acres of vines brings no feelings of fevered, patriotic "Ha!".

France's top wine-growing regions are to rip up some 18,000 hectares of prestige vines in the biggest purge of the country's wine industry since the Phylloxera epidemic a century ago.

Faced with over-production and crumbling export sales, Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Loire valley are to slash output by paying farmers a lump sum to abandon their vineyards.

This was a telling quote as well.

John Worontschak, a wine expert at Four Corners Consulting, said France's wine industry could no longer survive on a mass scale without subsidies. "In France it takes one person to tend two hectares, in Australia one person tends 50 hectares," he said. "The French have had their heads in the sand for a long time. They just thought they had a God-given right to make the world's best wines without trying, as if the wine made itself. In fact they were producing a lot of volatile, oxidised or spoiled wines."

I've always enjoyed a nice varietal. I'm partial to a deep, aromatic Cab Sauv but at times feel like a straight, uncomplicated glass of Syrah. Sangiovese is almost always a hit in my home. It seems to have caught on with the general public as well (who doesn't hear people ordering Merlot at restaurants?) which frustrates the vineyards forced to adhere to the French labeling system, which omits such details.

The Euro / Dollar exchange rate hasn't helped, either.

Roland Feredj, from the CIVB wine council in Bordeaux, denied that there was a quality problem, insisting that French wines were hamstrung by an "absurd" labeling system imposed by the government that few could understand outside France, and by the current exchange rate. "Our prices have gone up 50pc as a result of the euro-dollar rate. It's killing us," he said.

Posted by Michael at June 11, 2005 12:35 AM