The Ultra Quick Guide To Understanding French Wine

[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!

[normal]

Thanks a lot. I like your whine threads

[devogue]

Thanks a lot. I like your whine threads

I don't whine. I point things out.

[normal]

Thanks a lot. I like your whine threads

I don't whine. I point things out.

Sure you do, sure you do!

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I feel edjerkated bout whine now. Thanks.

Course, until I can find a job, it'll still be the 3 for a tenner plonk I will be swilling!

[devogue]

I feel edjerkated bout whine now. Thanks.

Course, until I can find a job, it'll still be the 3 for a tenner plonk I will be swilling!

Why not steal some good stuff? We never prosecute.

[Don't Panic]

I feel edjerkated bout whine now. Thanks.

Course, until I can find a job, it'll still be the 3 for a tenner plonk I will be swilling!

Why not steal some good stuff? We never prosecute.

XC, meet you in Fermanagh, bring a bolt cutters.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I feel edjerkated bout whine now. Thanks.

Course, until I can find a job, it'll still be the 3 for a tenner plonk I will be swilling!

Why not steal some good stuff? We never prosecute.

Just post me a bottle - it'll save you the cost of a glazier.

[JimC]

I feel edjerkated bout whine now. Thanks.

Course, until I can find a job, it'll still be the 3 for a tenner plonk I will be swilling!

Why not steal some good stuff? We never prosecute.

Just post me a bottle - it'll save you the cost of a glazier.

And they're bloody hard to find, these days - I hear they're all melting...





I'll get me coat...

[Sisifo]

Look for less well known regions and buy the most expensive wine from therw. A piss poor Chateauneuf du Pape will cost £20 a bottle because it has Chateauneuf du Pape on the bottle and that's the going rate for that appellation. The producers know that, and there's so much svaing face involved with wine that consumers will just go along with them and drink their sub standard shit while convincing themselves it's lovely.

Well, bollocks to that.

Not far south west and east of Chateauneuf du Pape are a couple of amazing regions - Cotes de Ventoux and Costiere de Nimes. The bog standard plonk from these regions costs about £3.99 (the bog standard stuff from the Cote du Rhone, because it's more famous, is around the £6.99 mark - anything less is utterly shite), so trade up to £8.99 or £9.99 and you'll get something pretty astonishing for your money made from the same grapes and in the same way as Chateauneuf. Why? Because every last penny has been squeezed out of the vines, you haven't been screwed because the name is famous and the land is expensive, and you will be receiving genuine value for money with all the usual hoity toity wine shit stripped away. Vacqueras and Gigondas are shit hot as well.

The OP and this advice in particular, has been the best introduction to wine that I have read; and I am now in charge of wine in my organization and I have to read a lot about it.

The advice to buy expensive from lesser regions, has given me amazing pleasurables surprises, and I repeat it to the Vietnameses that are getting interested in wine. It gives me Kudos in front of them, because it's the best no nonsense advice that you can find to enjoy good wine. I have to repeat that advice to you, with credit to its author.

For the record.

[devogue]