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.

Okay, like many (I can only assume) I did a jig when I heard the Supreme Court ruling that sang a victory for small wineries everywhere.

Much too hastily, it seems.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Last week, in a 5-4 ruling that rocked Michigan's inbred beer and wine industry, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a regulatory scheme that had for decades forbidden out-of-state wineries from shipping directly to their Michigan customers.

Wine drinkers celebrated, assuming that the decision cleared the way for them to order wines from California and Oregon the same way they purchase those manufactured in Michigan.

But beer and wine wholesalers, who'd defended Michigan's right to discriminate against out-of-state vintners, were quick to point out that nothing in the Supreme Court's ruling required the state to permit direct wine shipments from anyone.

In a letter to state legislators dated last Wednesday, the Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association pointed out that all the nation's highest court had mandated, strictly speaking, was that all wineries be treated the same.

"The court is not declaring that wine lovers have a blank check to purchase from out-of-state wine producers," the letter said. "The key operative words in the decision are 'if a state chooses to allow direct shipping,' which clearly means that a state may choose not to allow direct shipping."

So when do we get to celebrate? When do I get to order bottles of grapey goodness from my favorite small wineries in California and Oregon?

But as Free Press staff writer Jennifer Dixon observed in an exhaustively documented investigation published earlier this year, beer and wine wholesalers wield political power disproportionate to their modest numbers.

...

State lawmakers have about three weeks to fashion shipping rules that comply with the Supreme Court's objections.

Can they prove themselves worthy of the wholesalers' love with so many consumers watching?

I won't hold my breath. In the mean time, I'll simply be thankful that I live in a fairly metropolitan area with a pretty decent selection.

...even if I do have to ship my Marylin Merlot to my Aunt in Arizona, and then have extra reasons to celebrate family reunions that can be measured in milliliters.

The best news I have received this month!

Court Strikes Down Ban on Wine Shipments
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

Wine lovers may buy directly from out-of-state vineyards, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, striking down laws banning a practice that has flourished because of the Internet and growing popularity of winery tours.

The 5-4 decision strikes down laws in New York and Michigan that make it a crime to buy wine directly from vineyards in another state. In all, 24 states have laws that bar interstate shipments.

The state bans are discriminatory and anti-competitive, the court said.

"States have broad power to regulate liquor," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. "This power, however, does not allow states to ban, or severely limit, the direct shipment of out-of-state wine while simultaneously authorizing direct shipment by in-state producers."

"If a state chooses to allow direct shipments of wine, it must do so on evenhanded terms," he wrote.

Kennedy was joined in his opinion by Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

At issue was the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition in 1933 and granted states authority to regulate alcohol sales. Nearly half the states subsequently passed laws requiring outside wineries to sell their products through licensed wholesalers within the state.

But the Constitution also prohibits states from passing laws that discriminate against out-of-state businesses. That led to a challenge to laws in Michigan and New York, which allow direct shipments for in-state wineries but not out-of-state ones.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the ruling needlessly overturns long-established regulations aimed partly at protecting minors. State regulators under the 21st Amendment have clear authority to regulate alcohol as the see fit, he wrote.

"The court does this nation no service by ignoring the textual commands of the Constitution and acts of Congress," Thomas wrote.

He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and John Paul Stevens.

Sorry for the pun on "Que Sera Sera", but I was amused to learn that the popular Shiraz wines in local stores are actually made from what the French originally called Syrah. Not a different grape or unique varietal at all, just a little bit of creatively applied marketing. Apparently, this has been going on for some time and inspired me to take a closer look...

In a late-'70s moment that has become Napa legend, Robert Mondavi put his sauvignon blanc through oak barrels, changed it to the more easily parsed fume blanc, and created a sensation.

"A wine, by any other name, can sell better", by Jon Bonne

So it seems at first that renaming a wine to give it a more stylish impact is a relatively new phenomenon. But People have been labeling their wines as "Shiraz" now for many years, long before the evil lords of marketing began to focus their attention on vintage for the masses. How did this divergence come about?

It has sometimes been thought that the name of the grape Shiraz was taken directly from that of the city of Shiraz, Iran. More likely is that the name of the grape is a modification of "Scyras," one of a number of synonyms for Syrah in the Rhone Valley, where it was already established in Roman times and from where it was taken to Australia by James Busby in 1832.

-- Wikipedia

So when did Austrailia start calling it Shiraz? Have they ever not? I quick trip to Penfold's website revealed a biography of Max Schubert, "arguably the most important and influential figure in the modern Australian wine industry".

In 1950 Schubert was sent to study sherry-making in Spain. On his way back he visited Bordeaux where he was taken under the wing of Christian Cruse, one of the most respected and highly qualified wine men in France, and introduced to mature claret - "wines between 40 and 50 years old which were still sound and possessed magnificent bouquet and flavour".

Schubert returned from France inspired with a determination to produce "an Australian red wine that would last at least 20 years and comparable with those produced in Bordeaux...". He developed Grange Hermitage beginning with the 1951 vintage, using Shiraz grapes (rather than the Cabernet Sauvignon of Bordeaux) because Shiraz was the only quality red wine variety consistently available at the time. The first commercial Grange was the 1952 vintage, released in 1955.

-- Winemaker Max Schubert

So it seems that even though we are talking about the same grape, it certainly bears different names depending on who you are talking to, and as you can see from this next quote, it seems to be evolving into a modern interpretation of a young, flavorful, fruity wine.

A good deal of syrah, that well-loved Rhone grape, has been refashioned as shiraz. American pinot gris, once a rarity outside the West Coast, has been gaining traction nationwide as pinot grigio. One grape, two names.

While syrah has long been grown here in small amounts, Australians planted shiraz in vast quantities. Their success in selling fruity, affordable shiraz to Americans in the past 20 years has been such that the Aussie Wonder is now the second-most popular imported varietal, according to data from the Impact Databank 2004 wine study.

Eager to share in that good fortune, U.S. wineries have not simply rebranded syrah as shiraz; they tinkered with their taste profiles to produce punchy, lively, rather Down Under wines emblematic of the so-called New World style.

"A wine, by any other name, can sell better", by Jon Bonne