The Ultra Quick Guide To Understanding French Wine

[devogue]

Dev, do you stock any British wine? I hear some of the Brit Fizzy stuff is actually drinkable and indeed award winning.

Nyetimber is wonderful. Haven't tried many of the others, but the climate is about right and they've got the limestone soil like Champagne (White Cliffs of Dover and all that).

The Champagne houses are getting seriously worried about rising temperatures in the region and ther is word of them buying up swathes of land in Kent - it used to be that vintage Champagne was released three times a decade at most because ripeness was crucial, now they are being released almost every year. The ripeness is becoming too much - I'm getting fed up of Champagnes lacking acidity and bite.

[devogue]

Wine is wine.

Fuck up.

[Trolldor]

Wine is wine.

Unless it's Vinegar.

[devogue]

How's your knowledge of Italian wines? I'll be in Tuscany later this year.

Try lots of Chianti (I can get you an introduction to Dievole), but also get stuck in to Brunello de Montalcino and the so called "Super Tuscans" - try and call in to Tenuta San Guido, Tenuta del Ornellaia and Antinori.

Drink Chianti with food - the Sangiovese grape is high acid and works brilliantly with grub - use the Super Tuscans with all their Merlot, cabernet Sauvignon etc for sipping. Or just drink the local pish - it always tastes a hundred times better on balmy evenings.

[devogue]

Wine is wine.

Unless it's Vinegar.

The finest thing I tasted on my recent wine tour of Australia was a vinegar made by an ancient winemaker - it sat in a plastic blue tub outside his house for twenty years and it was beyong brilliant.

[Animavore]

Wine is wine.

Fuck up.

Why don't you show them the reports which show that people can't tell the difference between expensive wine and cheap or that if you change the bottles the wine is in, expensive for cheap, people will always prefer the the wine in the expensive bottle?

[Clinton Huxley]

Wine is wine.

Fuck up.

Why don't you show them the reports which show that people can't tell the difference between expensive wine and cheap or that if you change the bottles the wine is in, expensive for cheap, people will always prefer the the wine in the expensive bottle?

It's the same with expensive "brand" painkillers - they are more effective than supermarket brand.

[devogue]

Wine is wine.

Fuck up.

Why don't you show them the reports which show that people can't tell the difference between expensive wine and cheap or that if you change the bottles the wine is in, expensive for cheap, people will always prefer the the wine in the expensive bottle?

I agree with this, and it's something I'm very conscious of.

Remember that twat on the Podge and Rodge show who raved about Blossom Hill white, but didn't like the red as much - turns out it was the white with flavourless red colouring added.

I learned long ago to call a spade a spade, and I expect my staff and customers to do the same - hence my rant about overpriced forty quid a bottle Chateauneuf du Pape when a tenner a bottle beauty from the Languedoc will blow it away.

Also, when I taste in my wine club I always ensure it is blind tasting - I don't want to see labels, prices or anything. For the most part the more expensive wines rise to the top anyway, but there have been some amazing anomalies which I then use for sales purposes - a striking recent one was that Chateau Musar 2001(about £20 a bottle) from the Lebanon was miles better than Chateau La Mission Haut Brion 1988 (£150 a bottle). The La Mission is way beyond most peoples' price point, but there are plenty who can stretch to the Musar.

[Trolldor]

Wine is wine.

Fuck up.

Why don't you show them the reports which show that people can't tell the difference between expensive wine and cheap or that if you change the bottles the wine is in, expensive for cheap, people will always prefer the the wine in the expensive bottle?

If you ignore the whole idea of 'quality wines' and focus on what's there, some wines are consistently better than others by brand, but that's personal preference depending on how bitter/sweet you like it, and even to some extent the texture (Some wines have floaty bits for whatever reason). However, local wines at around $20-30 are more than capable of being better than the $70-100 wines.
First thing we learnt during our RSA, wine by cost is an idiotic way to approach the subject.

Fucking hate white wine though, all tastes like piss to me.

[devogue]

Wine is wine.

Fuck up.

Why don't you show them the reports which show that people can't tell the difference between expensive wine and cheap or that if you change the bottles the wine is in, expensive for cheap, people will always prefer the the wine in the expensive bottle?

If you ignore the whole idea of 'quality wines' and focus on what's there, some wines are consistently better than others by brand, but that's personal preference depending on how bitter/sweet you like it, and even to some extent the texture (Some wines have floaty bits for whatever reason). However, local wines at around $20-30 are more than capable of being better than the $70-100 wines.
First thing we learnt during our RSA, wine by cost is an idiotic way to approach the subject.

Fucking hate white wine though, all tastes like piss to me.

Like many things which have been assigned value, wine is open to personal likes and dislikes.

Concentrating on Australian wines for a while, there are indeed some fabulous wines which punch way above their weight - Hewitson's Miss Harry Shiraz springs to mind - about £13 (AUS $26) in the UK, but much better than Wolf Blass's Black Label at £50 (btw ignore Wolf Blass's top labels - Black, Gold and Platinum - overpriced cack), but generally speaking the more expensive the wine, the more texture (the floaty bits may be tartrates coming out of solution or organic matter in unfined wines - harmless and often a sign of a good wine), complexity and, erm, awesomeness is present. What I love about Australian wine makers is that even though they could push the prices of their top wines up by much more than they are currently selling them for, most of them want their wines to be accessible to the common man (even if it's a stretch) - the French don't care, and they have pretty much decided to collude in the secondary market for their greatest wines by pumping up the prices. Australia's top wine on release (2009 Grange) will probably start at about £1,200 a case. It looks like 2009 Lafite in the barrel will cost £12,000 a case.

Here's an intersting thing to consider - it costs about £25 to physically produce a bottle of the world's most expensive wine, Chateau Petrus (a £10 a bottle wine might cost about £1.20). Don't expect to get much change out of £3,000 a bottle in a top vintage, though - the market takes over, and £3,000 is spare change to plenty of millionaires.

I have tasted Chateau Petrus, and it's very nice - at a guess I would have said a fair price for it as a wine was about £100 a bottle. So if the most desirable wine in the world's true value is £100 a bottle, why spend a penny more than £100 for anything else?

[Feck]

Wolf Blass yellow label I have seen for £8.99 a bottle WTF it's worth maybe £4.99 !

[devogue]

Wolf Blass yellow label I have seen for £8.99 a bottle WTF it's worth maybe £4.99 !

Twenty years ago Wolf Blass made really lovely wines - their Yellow Label Cabernet was brilliant stuff. In 1992 it cost £6.99 a bottle - it still costs £6.99 on promotion because good old Wolfie sold up long ago and it's now thrown together piss water. To get the same quality as twenty years ago it would have to retail for about £16-20 a bottle, but then they wouldn't be able to shift hundreds of thousands of cases at that price, would they?

So a big brand has got progressively worse over the years but people stick with it because they know the name and they think it's the same wine.

[Feck]

Wolf Blass yellow label I have seen for £8.99 a bottle WTF it's worth maybe £4.99 !

Twenty years ago Wolf Blass made really lovely wines - their Yellow Label Cabernet was brilliant stuff. In 1992 it cost £6.99 a bottle - it still costs £6.99 on promotion because good old Wolfie sold up long ago and it's now thrown together piss water. To get the same quality as twenty years ago it would have to retail for about £16-20 a bottle, but then they wouldn't be able to shift hundreds of thousands of cases at that price, would they?

So a big brand has got progressively worse over the years but people stick with it because they know the name and they think it's the same wine.

So that's why I used to love the stuff but now find myself disappointed !

[devogue]

Wolf Blass yellow label I have seen for £8.99 a bottle WTF it's worth maybe £4.99 !

Twenty years ago Wolf Blass made really lovely wines - their Yellow Label Cabernet was brilliant stuff. In 1992 it cost £6.99 a bottle - it still costs £6.99 on promotion because good old Wolfie sold up long ago and it's now thrown together piss water. To get the same quality as twenty years ago it would have to retail for about £16-20 a bottle, but then they wouldn't be able to shift hundreds of thousands of cases at that price, would they?

So a big brand has got progressively worse over the years but people stick with it because they know the name and they think it's the same wine.

So that's why I used to love the stuff but now find myself disappointed !

They now have to scrape together as much juice as they can to satisfy their international clients' demands. Even the President's Selection is woeful, worse than the old Yellow Label.

[Rum]

You love wine - specifically Australian, Californian or Chilean wine.

You have an aversion to French wine, and you admit that part of that aversion is the sheer confusion and unhelpfulness of French wine labelling. You have a fear of the perceived "mystique" of French wine making, and the chances are you have tasted a wne your palate wasn't quite ready for and you have long written the ultimate country for great wine off.

Fair enough.

-snip-

Nope - not fair enough. Good French wine (and some of the internally consumed plonk) is hard to beat!