You know your bandwagon's got steam when even the French hop on

[stevebody]

Berthomeau is an accomplished ruffler of feathers and his unapologetic habit of telling the truth as he sees it is so un-French that it probably drives a lot of the wine trade crazy that people listen to him.

France has made some of the world's most profound wines. No argument with that. But the fact is that many Americans, when they achieve a certain level of wine knowledge above pure novice status, feel that there is some need to learn, buy, and drink French wines. I've been to a dozen blind tastings of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Rhones in the past ten years at which I or someone else has inserted a ringer - like a Caymus Cab in a blind Bordeaux Tasting - and had that wine be the one that everyone drank, preferred, and discussed. We had 18 different opinions on which Chateau had produced that delicious Bordeaux and, of course, none of them was even in the right continent.

The whole business of terroir is, IMHO, horribly overworked. Every wine weenie friend I have in Seattle can wax on and ON about the vital importance of geography but none of them can tell you why a California Cab with few regional characteristics is what's open on their sideboard. The French, I believe, hide behind that old warhorse notion that Place Is All in order to excuse wines that have few pleasing characteristics to recommend them. Barthomeau is exactly right: the entire world of wine is moving in the direction of drinking across national borders and selecting by varietal and France is rowing as hard as it can in the opposite direction. Politics aside, France deserves a certain amount of respect for its past glories but the average wine buyer - that 95% of the wine-buying public - is under no obligation to buy anything French just because an '82 Cheval Blanc made people see stars. The wine trade is very much, and rightly so, a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately proposition.

Ultimately, this "debate" in France means just exactly zippo. France WILL adopt new attitudes toward how it presents its wines or it will cease to be the prime wine region on the planet. I have seen this coming for at least a decade: my restaurant customers skipping the French list in favor of something new and exciting from Spain or Austrailia or Washington; younger diners dismissing Bordeaux as "old peoples' wines"; many, many people simply refusing to drink anything that doesn't offer a clearly marked varietal choice; or the simple fact that wine production has exploded so dynamically in the past decade that the sheer volume of choices obscures the French segment of the market. The largest trend I've seen is people "discovering" Italian and Spanish wines; warmer, more-friendly wines that thumb their noses at the Gallic notions of austerity and restraint. We are a "bang for the buck" society and the rest of the world, right or wrong, are adopting a lot of our attitudes. As a salesman of fine and value wines, I just can't, when someone comes to me and says, "I need a really great bottle of wine that goes for under $25", recommend a Bordeaux. The big, sumptuous ones cost a LOT more and the sub-25 ones are too wimpy and undistinguished to compete with things like a Zenato Ripasso, a Ferrari-Carano Siena, an Allende Rioja, a Condado de Haza, a Mitolo Jester, a Ballantyne Zin, an Allegrini Palazzo della Torre, a Nitardi Chianti, or a L'Ecole No. 41 Schoolhouse Red.

The French vintners who have been practically spat upon for producing varietal bottlings have made a lot of $$$ on them. That's probably what pisses the terroiristes off. Their attitude that people should buy their stuff because it's a serious expression of some hillside in the Northern Rhone is rooted in a fading assumption of their own superiority. They can, IMHO, change or die. Barthomeau will be villified, as prophets usually are, but he'll be vindicated by that oldest and most powerful force: the inevitable evolution of the marketplace.

[This message has been edited by stevebody (edited 04-04-2003).]