How Bureaucrats Are Wrecking French WineIt's time to throw out the rule book.

(Continued from page 1)

PRINTDISCUSSE-MAILRSSRECOMMEND...SINGLE PAGE

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

In some appellations, the boundaries have been extended to include land not fit for making decent wine. Yield limits are now routinely flouted in many appellations, and a number of them also permit mechanized harvesting, which is a surefire way to produce rotgut. Then there are the taste tests, whose results are about as trustworthy as Zimbabwean presidential elections. In a survey released last year by the French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir, wine industry insiders acknowledged that as many as one-third of all AOC wines were undeserving of the distinction. Local control, combined with reckless growth, has been a disaster, and the wine-buying public has taken note. In the past decade or so, the French share of the global wine market has declined sharply. Fine cabernets and chardonnays are being produced around the world nowadays, and while the most celebrated French wines—the Romanée-Contis and the Latours and Lafites—are more popular and expensive than ever, the market for many lesser ones has all but dried up. Alain Bazot, UFC-Que Choisir's president, summed it up well: "For years, there has been a steady fall in the quality of many AOC wines which has completely undermined the confidence of consumers in the system." This, combined with the continued decline of domestic consumption in France (it has plunged 50 percent over the last four decades), has left thousands of winemakers in danger of losing their livelihoods. La crise viticole, as it is known, has hit the two lowest categories, vin de table and vin de pays, hard, but it has also driven many AOC vintners to the brink.

But rather than seeking to root out the bad wines and incompetent producers, some appellations seem to be punishing the good ones, and it appears that Brun, who owns an estate called Domaine des Terres Dorées, is the latest target. Brun fashions classic, lip-smacking Beaujolais, the sort that is increasingly difficult to find in an area drowning in cadaverous, insipid wines. The dismal quality of so much of the output in Beaujolais goes a long way to explaining why the region is mired in a slump that, by some estimates, is likely to put 30 percent to 50 percent of its winemakers out of business. In a rational universe, Brun would be considered a local hero and a beacon to his neighbors. Unfortunately, viticultural France is not such a place.

Joe Dressner of Louis/Dressner Selections is Brun's U.S. importer and also represents a handful of other winemakers who have run afoul of the wine commissars. Dressner thinks the '07 L'Ancien will find buyers but says it will have to be sold mainly through specialty shops that have the time and desire to explain to clients why it is no ordinary vin de table. Dressner is hopeful that reason and logic will one day reconquer France's vineyards, but he believes that the appellation system, in its current form, is a joke. "I don't care if some guy in Vosne-Romanée [an appellation in Burgundy] makes swill, but I do care if he is making it impossible for winemakers there to do otherwise," Dressner told me by phone from France. "I think they should just let the market decide what's good or not good."

I agree. When it comes to the AOC system, I've become militantly libertarian—which is to say, I think the taste tests and most of the regulations ought to be dropped. (If the Cato Institute ever branches out into wine studies, consider this my application.) The AOC designation should serve one purpose: to indicate a wine's place of origin. Beyond that, and apart from a few basic rules guarding against fraud, vintners should be left to decide for themselves how they work, and it should be left to the market to decide whose wines reflect well on an appellation and whose do not. There is a lot of talk about overhauling the AOCs, but it is delusional to believe that the French government is capable of fixing the problem. As one Bordeaux official recently told the Wine Spectator, "Proposing important agricultural reforms yet rarely putting them into practice is a great French tradition." Even if Paris were to come up with a sensible plan—and any sensible plan would necessarily include a sharp reduction in the number of appellations—it would likely run into insurmountable, possibly even violent opposition. The protracted, farcical battle over efforts to update the chateaux rankings in Bordeaux's Saint Emilion appellation is indicative of just how deep resistance to change runs.

No doubt, the idea of scaling back the significance of the AOC designation would strike many in France as blasphemous. As Tyler Colman pointed out in an e-mail, even the most laissez-faire, freethinking French vintners consider the system sacrosanct. But rigid classifications and bureaucratic red tape are not the source of France's viticultural glory; it is the quality of the land (some of it, anyway) married to a centuries-old winemaking tradition. Moreover, if the logic undergirding the appellation regime—the idea that certain grapes pair better with certain sites than others—is true, why does it need legal enforcement? Hundreds of years of experience have demonstrated that pinot noir flourishes like no other grape in Vosne-Romanée. Is Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, which is located in Vosne-Romanée, suddenly going to rip up its pinot vines and replace them with cabernet sauvignon if no longer prevented from doing so? Pinot noir is what works best in Vosne-Romanée, it is what oenophiles want from Vosne-Romanée, and that is not going to change anytime soon.

True, Vosne-Romanée is a successful appellation where the qualitative bar is set high, consumer demand is strong, and producers are generally doing well. The fear is that if the rules are swept away in appellations that aren't so prosperous, part of France's rich viticultural heritage might be swept away in the process. But many of the ailing appellations don't have illustrious pasts, and whether they do or they don't, the AOC mechanism can't sustain vintners and regions that ultimately can't sustain themselves. In too many places, it has become a drag on quality, promoting lowest-common-denominator winemaking at the expense of good winemaking. Fortunately for the competent producers, the market increasingly holds the whip, and thanks to the proliferation of wine criticism and the advent of the Internet, it is becoming ever-more efficient at identifying and rewarding excellence and punishing failure. That's why millions of bottles of insipid French wines now go unsold each year and why (sadly but unavoidably) hundreds of vintners are going bust. But it is also the reason why those 5,200 cases of the '07 L'Ancien won't necessarily be collecting dust in Brun's cellar if his last appeal is rejected. More and more, the market is treating AOC status as simply a geographic indication—a wine's birth certificate. French officialdom should do likewise.

PRINTE-MAILRECOMMEND...RSS

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

SPONSORED CONTENT

• In Vino Pompousness
  The Michael Moore of the wine world is back.
  Mike Steinberger | Oct. 30, 2009
• What Would John Adams Drink?
  Get ready for the rebirth of cider in America.
  Brian Palmer | Sept. 30, 2009
• We're All Wine Critics Now
  How the Internet has democratized drinking.
  Mike Steinberger | Sept. 25, 2009
• Search for more Drink articles
• Subscribe to the Drink RSS feed
• View our complete Drink archive