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EYE ON EUROPE |
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French vin under pressure,
but not from les girls' feet
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
In the olden days, pretty girls from Bordeaux used to peel off their leggings, raise their skirts and jump into vats of grapes to stomp out the juice that would, in time, become prized wine. (I always wondered where that tang came from.) There was laughter, dancing, even frolicking among the leaping beauties. Some of this may have been due to excessive consumption of the previous year’s production.
Oh, those were the days.
But a few weeks ago I drove out to St. Emillion, just half an hour from Bordeaux, to have a look at vines in winter. I have rarely seen anything so poignant. Icy fog shrouded the thousands of hectares in all directions and all I could see was an expanse of undulating fields of gnarled roots apparently gasping for life. Some days the temperatures actually hit the freezing point around here.
Was this a case of something Annie Proulx would call “Bad Dirt”? No, but I did find it hard to believe that in a few months these same roots would sprout foliage, then produce tons of perfectly formed bunches of grapes.
And yet the question in these parts is, “Who’s going to drink it?” For the whole French wine industry is gasping for life as the rest of the world finds its way to market with bottles as cheap if not cheaper, and as good if not better.
Wine experts say a key reason for the French decline is that their quality control depends on tradition, on family secrets and on an educated nose. Meanwhile new competitors--“new” meaning the past 30 or 40 years--have turned to science to push the quality upwards in the fastest and most economical way possible. The University of California, Davis, chemists have led the way, working with Napa Valley producers.
The way out for the French would be Business Administration 101: cut costs and reduce lower prices to meet the competitive threat and add a bit of scientific input. The most painful remedy, reining in production to ease the glut, is however anathema to the traditionalists. The French never have been good at accepting change.
From my perspective, today’s prices are delightfully low, but then I don’t depend on wine for my livelihood. I have bought cases of very acceptable whites, reds and rosés at 5 euros (about 6 dollars) a bottle, and the cheaper table wines--still carrying the Bordeaux appellation--have dropped below one euro (about a dollar 20) a bottle.
French supermarkets are changing the dynamics
of wine selling by purchasing thousands of cases from harassed
producers at low prices and passing along the savings to serious
drinkers like me. But even the middle class locals are driving
their SUVs to the supermarkets to load up. An aging yuppie--called
“bobos” here, for bourgeois bohemian--tells me he is
merely a realist. He goes shopping for the best prices. Some
producers now box special labels for certain supermarkets. Others
are selling on the internet. The rules are beginning to go.
After 250 years of growth, the Bordeaux grandes familles
and their lesser imitators are finding it difficult to face the
lessons of BA 101. They seem to be saying, “This cannot
be happening.”
One of the biggest stories of recent months was the news that one wine-grower had started to rip out 100 hectares--several acres--of grape stock so he could replant his holdings in corn. “At current prices, I don’t make enough to feed my family,” he told the local newspaper Sud-Ouest. A large photo of his muddy tractor looked to the natives like a bulldozer with bad intentions. The European Union is even offering financial incentives to lure wine-growers away from a doomed business. Very few are taking the bait.
I pieced this anecdotal evidence together with a recent experience at a good Bordeaux restaurant at which the recommended red was a Cabernet Sauvignon called Mapu under the Baron de Rothschild label. In smallish type it admitted, “Product of Chile”. The waiter tried to urge me on it, saying “It’s not bad. You’ll be surprised.”
I grope for a comparison to explain how heretical this seemed. Try imagining roast pork on the menu in Jerusalem, with the waiter recommending it: “It’s not bad. You’ll be surprised.”
Until recently, the entrenched families of the Bordeaux region only sold their property or their vineyards within the same coterie. The rare cases of a Japanese or American investor sneaking a deal through made news. But now one wine-grower is advertising his 30 hectares of syrah grape stock on the internet for 500,000 euros (about 600,000 dollars) to the highest bidder. He says a couple of years ago it would have brought twice that. The past two years have been catastrophic, he says, “because there simply is no demand.”
Real estate agents estimate that 400 or 500 vineyards are on the market, more than at time time in living memory.
At some level the French know that things will get worse. They are watching warily as the Chinese talk of exporting wine.
©2006 by Michael Johnson. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted on Feb. 20, 2006.his column was first posted March 20, 2006.
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