Socialism run amok!

[Thomas]

"well US labels give the information the consumer wants to see, French labels give you the information the government allows you to see. I have to choose as a consumer on this one."

That is is an argument for having no regulations at all, and is precisely what fostered fraud in the past. If a producer is told to put on the label what the consumer wants to see that is exactly what the producer will do until someone finds out that what is on the label is not in the bottle.

Plus, I still haven't a clue as to how the word Chardonnay on a label tells me whether or not it is oak aged, produced completely in stainless, gone through ml, or is more than 75% Chardonnay. So how do I choose if I like a Chardonnay that is 100% stainless steel only, no ml? I could go by past experience with that producer, but there is nothing that says the new wine will follow in last year's production methods.

What is needed is a happy balance between "real" regulations and "educated" consumers. Yet, I fully agree with you: consumers seem to prefer to be told rather than to find out, so the happy balance will likely not get the second part of the equation.

Just think of the word "organic." Consumers love to see it on a label but I have yet to meet a consumer who knows exactly what that word on a wine label is telling us.

Incidentally, I think the French have missed the mark terribly but not in regulations--in marketing. They stupidly have a mentality that "because it is French there is no need to explain it." That attitude is what will doom their modern wine industry. They could learn a lot from the Italian wine industry, which got where it is by first learning a lot from the French and regulating its industry and then doing the marketing and the changing.



[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 07-10-2006).]