Industry Spin Pimps "turn out" Food & Wine Magazine!

[tomstevenson]

TWELVE GRANDES MARQUES
I realise that TV viewers in the former colonies are used to air-heads talking a lot and saying very little, but whoever said "there are hundreds of producers but only twelve Grand Marques which are the ones you want to buy" must have been close to brain-dead. For a start, the Grandes Marques were disbanded in 1997 and even when they existed there were 24 of them, not 12. Claiming there are hundreds of producers is something of an understatement. There are some 2,500 producers who churn out more than 12,200 brands (and the growers are just as much to blame for these fantasy labels as the houses). Multiply that figure by four, the average number of products per brand, and we end up with 50,000 "different" Champagnes. And somebody reckons only twelve brands are worth considering ..... Is Botafogo's rant accurate? I don't agree with everything he says (there are lots of superb Champagnes produced by even the largest of the former grandes marques - even Mumm produced good wines in 1995 and just wait until the 1996s hit the shelf), but he certainly does name some great growers and I would much rather browse through his 150 than brain-dead's 12.