My Dearest France ...

Matt Kramer
Posted: September 23, 2004

It's been a long time since I've written to you. And I know that you're not happy that I ran off to Italy for all those months. But believe me, I've never stopped thinking about you. Of course, you've been in the news lately and it's not been pretty, what with all your hand-wringing about how the New World is eating your déjeuner.

You should know that you have always been my great love. Was my 528-page book on Burgundy anything other than one of the world's longer love letters? And please don't forget all those many cycling and walking trips, sometimes for months at a time. There's almost no part of your lovely octagonal self that I have not traversed.

So why did I run off to Italy? I'll tell you why. You're getting cranky. The world is changing, and far from leading the charge -- and the change -- you're insisting that everyone else is at fault.

Remember your headline-making tantrum in 2001 via the French Ministry of Agriculture? "Until recent years, wine was with us," you said. "We were the center, the unavoidable reference point. Today, the barbarians are at our gates: Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Chile, Argentina, South Africa."

Sure, the barbarian bit was meant to be ironic. But you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to know that beneath the irony is a seething resentment. It's an old story: Others are doing this to you.

Well, it's not so. You've done it to yourself. Take controlled appellations, for example. Back in April, René Renou, president of the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine wine division, announced a plan to overhaul your controlled appellation system for the first time since its creation in the mid-1930s.

Controlled appellations have proliferated like aphids on a rose. The original idea was conservative. Famous names such as Chambertin and Champagne were being usurped by fraudulent wines with fake labels. Producers of the originals were going bankrupt, swamped by counterfeits.

But no sooner did your few acknowledged great wine zones get such protection -- at a price of heavy regulation and bureaucratization -- than every other winegrowing area, no matter how insignificant, clamored for similar status.

So now, most of your winegrowers are constrained, Gulliver-like, by chafing regulations they -- and we -- hardly need. Does it matter whether a red Burgundy can legally contain Cabernet Sauvignon when its ancient tradition was exclusively Pinot Noir? You bet it does. But do we care about the sanctity of Coteaux du Languedoc? Hardly.

How did you propose to fix this mess? Fewer regulations and more freedom, right? Wrong. Instead you proposed yet another layer of regulation called an Appellation d'Origine Controlée d'Excellence, or AOCE, a kind of parental, "This time we really mean it."

The Italians did this, by the way, with their much-ballyhooed designation of DOCG -- garantita -- to differentiate its holders from the hoi polloi of plain old DOC. It's been worthless. (When was the last time a buyer asked, "Excuse me, but is this bottle of Italian wine a DOCG?")

Then there's your crise de pocketbook in Bordeaux. In just three years, prices of everyday Bordeaux wine have plummeted by half.

In late June the Bordeaux wine authorities announced that, for the 2004 vintage, winegrowers can sell only 50 hectoliters per hectare. This will reduce overall sales by one-third. Mind you, actual production -- or rather, over-production -- is not being limited, just the sales.

My dearest France, you're an aging beauty unwilling to look in the mirror. Do you still have what it takes? Of course you do. There's nobody like you.

But the time has come -- hell, it's long past due -- for you to wake up from a reverie of past glories and recognize that what you really have to sell is quality. Not just proclaimed quality—"This is a French wine, monsieur" -- but the real thing. The kind not proclaimed by regulation, but earned by sweat. And courage.

Remember, you used to be the world's greatest wine marketer. You invented Beaujolais Nouveau and made it an event. You invented Champagne and made it the wine of celebration. You invented grand châteaus and the concept of terroir. You made wine glamorous, exciting, provocative. You, and you alone, made wine culturally essential. And you sold all this to the world, not just to yourself.

My dearest France, I love you. You're perfect. Now change.

Matt Kramer has contributed regularly to Wine Spectator since 1985.