The ANNOTICO Report
The French wine industry is in crisis. The world is not
buying enough
French wine.
Wine represents 12% of France's agricultural production,
and accounts for
$9.9 billion of the country's GDP. French wine sales
worldwide have been
gradually eroding for years. The situation became a crisis
last year when
wine exports fell 9.2% in value on the heels of 2003
sales, which were
considered dismal.
Making matters worse, French domestic wine consumption
has dropped to
historic lows, with the country drinking half as much
wine per capita as it
did in 1960, partially due to an aggressive campaign
against drunk driving.
Therefore with Wine being so important to the Economy,
and International
and Domestic consumption headed due south, French
winemakers, more
comfortable basking in tradition than questioning it,
are rethinking the
Rules governing how they Make and Name their wines, the
Grapes they grow
and How they are grown. Even the look of their wine Labels
is being
reconsidered. The French government is scrambling to
Promote its wines in
America, even gasp considering a Madison Avenue Advertising
campaign.
The French have finally come to the late realization that
"We can't
anymore tell the nice wine story". "France acts as if
it still has a
monopoly on wine and can insist that consumers learn
our complicated wine
story,"
"We have lived for centuries where the only problem was
to make the wine
producer more comfortable. Today our problem is to make
the customer more
comfortable. They buy whatever they like."
And the consumer is buying improved wines from Italy and
Spain, along with
American, Australian, Chilean, Argentine and South African
wines and
they are infinitely easier to comprehend.
It's also about looking modern. The bottle has to stand
out, which isn't
easy in a crowded grocery store wine aisle. New World
wine regions have
been doing it for years, and even Italy and Spain are
sprucing up their
labels.
The model for French Wine Distributors? E.& J. Gallo's Red Bicyclette.
Gallo is showing the way "Joe Gallo has the guts
to believe in French
wine, to put his money there to make something happen.
We are very thankful
for that," says Christian Berger, the agricultural counselor
with the
French Embassy in Washington, D.C, noting that the Gallo
wines produced in
France are increasing the sales of French wine in America.
Joe Gallo, the savior of French wine? Sacre Bleu!!!!
[RAA NOTE: Actually it is Who is Going to Save French
Wines???
Actually, Who is Going to Save French-American Wines,
since all French
wines are a result of grafting French Vines on American
Roots, after
"phylloxera vastatrix" wiped out the vineyards of France
and Europe in the
1860s. :)]
Facing a crisis, the French wine industry is finally forced
to loosen its
grasp on tradition.
Los Angeles Times
By Corie Brown
Times Staff Writer
March 2, 2005
The notion that French wine has fallen into the hands
of philistines is
sure to find an audience when the documentary "Mondovino"
is released in
L.A. theaters April 29. Director Jonathan Nossiter belabors
that idea for
two hours, 17 minutes and 11 seconds, cutting back and
forth between crusty
traditionalists in worn sweaters and suspendered trousers
who absolutely
love terroir and their spiritual opposites: chain-smoking
pragmatists in
fancy cars who hawk modern methods of manipulating wine.
"Mondovino" is a lot of things; subtle, however, isn't one of them.
The French wine industry is in crisis. More comfortable
basking in
tradition than questioning it, French winemakers are
rethinking the rules
governing how they make and name their wines, the grapes
they grow and how
they are grown. Even the look of their wine labels is
being reconsidered.
The French government is scrambling to promote its wines
in America, even
gasp considering a Madison Avenue advertising campaign.
(Champagne
already has one, and it's the one French region for which
sales are
actually climbing.)
The debate central to "Mondovino" one that's raging
across France's
storied wine regions only appears to be a tug of war
between art and
commerce. Those stark contrasts grow fuzzy in the gray
light of the real
issue: The world is not buying enough French wine. Market
forces aren't
known for encouraging individuality Velveeta sells
better than Taleggio.
But for the first time in the history of French wine,
the demands of the
global market are an unavoidable fact.
"It has taken a while for our producers to understand
that there is a
problem," says Christian Berger, the agricultural counselor
with the French
Embassy in Washington, D.C. And even now that they have
accepted that fact,
"there is no unanimity at all on what should be done."
Wine looms large on the French economic landscape. Representing
12% of
France's agricultural production, it accounts for $9.9
billion of the
country's gross domestic product. French wine sales worldwide
have been
gradually eroding for years. The situation became a crisis
last year when
wine exports (excluding Champagne) fell 6.7% in volume
and 9.2% in value on
the heels of 2003 sales, which were considered dismal,
according to the
French Federation of Exporters of Wines & Spirits.
Making matters worse, French wine consumption has dropped
to historic lows,
with the country drinking half as much wine per capita
as it did in 1960.
An aggressive federal campaign against drunk driving
is part of the reason,
according to Berger. Strict new standards, more stringent
than those in
California, have the French thinking twice before having
a second glass of
wine with dinner.
But the real problem is there's too much French wine.
Hoping for a quick
fix in the region that appears to be hardest hit, the
government is paying
grape growers in Bordeaux to rip up marginal vineyards
and turn surplus
wine into industrial alcohol. So far, however, only 475
acres of a targeted
25,000 acres of vineyards have been plowed under. The
government plans to
distill a whopping 250 million liters of wine from the
abundant 2004
vintage into alcohol, 10 times as much wine as would
be distilled in a
typical year; most of it is labeled Appellation d'Origine
Contr๔l้e (AOC).
Still, it won't be enough to sop up all of the surplus.
Altering the structure
Ultimately, it is the structure of the wine industry that
must change,
according to Ren้ Renou, a Loire Valley winemaker and
the current president
of the powerful National Committee for Wine of the AOC,
the organization
charged with enforcing the country's strict regulations
for the making of
premium wines. Renou has proposed a radical overhaul
of the country's
winemaking rules the most sweeping changes since the
AOC was codified in
1929 to give winemakers greater latitude in how they
make and sell their
wines.
"People say I am burning the history of France," quips
Renou. But perhaps
the better analogy is religion, he says, "like when they
changed the way
the priest says Mass," referring to the Catholic Church's
decision to
abandon Latin for modern languages in the 1960s. French
wine sales are
suffering, he says, because France has failed to modernize
its winemaking
industry.
Renou advocates producing less AOC wine. Perhaps 10% of
it isn't up to
minimum standards, he says. "We can't anymore tell the
nice wine story to
people and not have it correspond to what is in the bottle,"
he says.
When pressed about how much wine he'd like to see taken
off the market,
Renou backpedals. "We're France. If you push too far,
winegrowers will
riot. They go on strike and shout in the streets. The
politicians don't
like it." While there is no formal schedule for considering
Renou's
proposal, he says the French government could enact it
as early as this
year.
It likely will take longer. "France acts as if it still
has a monopoly on
wine and can insist that consumers learn our complicated
wine story," says
Renou. "We have lived for centuries where the only problem
was to make the
wine producer more comfortable. Today our problem is
to make the customer
more comfortable. They buy whatever they like."
And they are buying American, Australian, Chilean, Argentine
and South
African wines along with improved wines from Spain and
Italy. For $10,
these wines may not equal fine French wine, says Renou,
but they can be
very good. And from the point of view of the American
consumer Renou
likes to refer to a grocery store shopper in Little Rock,
Ark. they are
infinitely easier to comprehend.
"A second way to understand wine has been created by the
New World. It's
about the grape type, the color, the sugar," he explains.
In other words,
it's easier to understand Pinot Noir than to memorize
the appellations of
Burgundy. "In Little Rock, wine is a quick, immediate
pleasure, no dream,
no story, no explanation. The New World is more efficient.
The French are
not prepared for this world," he says.
America matters because the U.S. spends more money on
imported wine than
does any other market in the world. And while French
wine sales have fallen
in America, overall consumption here is inching up. Americans
now annually
consume roughly 10 bottles of wine each, up from seven
bottles 10 years
ago. Compared with the French, who drink an average of
77 bottles a year,
there is plenty of room for the American market to grow.
The falling value of the dollar a 40% shift over the
last three years
is making the American market more and more difficult
to navigate. What was
a $10 bottle of French wine in 2001 now costs $14, taking
into account the
shifting exchange rate. Wines from outside Europe haven't
experienced the
same currency fluctuation, or the resulting price increases.
Most French vintners have cut their prices to try to keep
their wines
competitively priced, according to American importers.
But often that's not
enough. "With the 2000 vintage, I sold thousands of cases
of Bordeaux wine
for $7 a bottle," says Steve Winfield, a Los Angeles-based
importer who
sells only Bordeaux wines. "I'm scouting for wines with
the 2003 vintage
that I can sell for $7, and they are hard to find. Everyone's
margins are
squeezed."
There is no crisis for the best French wines, says Berger.
"At the top of
the market, prices are a bit crazy, rising higher and
higher every year
with no problem selling the wine. The difficulty is for
the middle and
lower end segments. The global market for wine is more
competitive there.
There are plenty of new producers."
And for these wines, America is the most important market.
"The bulk of the
market is new to wine," says Berger. "They don't know
much about it, and
they apparently like wines that are fruity with a lot
of sugar. Our product
is not as well suited to this market as, say, Australian
wine. French wine
is more subtle. We have no big brands. Our labels are
difficult to read."
Bordeaux winemakers, says Berger, have been the most outspoken
critics of
the changes proposed by Renou. After record sales of
its celebrated 2000
vintage, "it has been hard for them to come down to earth,"
says Berger.
"The situation is very tense in Bordeaux."
Two branches of AOC?
Renou has proposed bifurcating the AOC into a higher and
a lower level, or,
he says, they can be considered "the complex and the
simple."
A new "excellence" category would require winemakers to
follow more
stringent controls on wine grape growing and winemaking
than current AOC
rules demand. The top 20% of current AOC winemakers likely
would opt for
this "excellence" category, Renou estimates. This is
the luxury market for
traditional wines, and "it must be protected," he says.
A second level of AOC wines, what Renou refers to as "normal"
wines, would
be allowed to disregard many of the current AOC rules.
These are the ones
that must compete with emerging international wines,
he says. Winemakers
who opt for this category should be allowed to consider
any grape-growing
and winemaking protocol. "Winemakers would propose their
ideas to the
National Committee for Wine, and we would decide if those
ideas would be
permitted," says Renou. "Everything is open for discussion,
while today it
is prohibited to even talk about these ideas."
That means the question of when or how to irrigate vineyards
or what grapes
to plant variables that are tightly regulated now throughout
France
would be considered. There would be fewer restrictions
on what grapes could
be blended together in particular wines as well. While
Bordeaux and Rh๔ne
blends would remain tightly controlled for the "excellence"
AOC,
second-tier wines could have broad latitude with what
could be considered
for their blends. In appellations in which blending is
not now allowed, it
would be permitted in the second tier. Rules also would
be relaxed
concerning blending grapes harvested from different parts
of a region or
even across regions, among other things, according to
Renou.
What about allowing the addition of oak chips during barrel
aging to
exaggerate certain flavors, as is practiced in the U.S.
and Australia, for
instance? "Why not?" says Renou. "We have to allow people
to make decisions
for themselves about their own wine."
At the same time, Renou would like the French wine industry
to police
itself more aggressively on quality. Producers who ignore
vineyard yield
limits, a common occurrence today, says Renou, should
not be allowed to
call their wine AOC. This overproduction "must disappear,"
he says. "If we
want to say we are the best, each bottle must be checked."
Renou's proposal also would relax AOC labeling rules to
allow varietal
names and other New World conventions. While there are
AOCs (such as
Alsace) that use varietal labeling, most don't. Winemakers
have to opt out
of the AOC, labeling their wines simply vin de table,
to do these things
now.
The French government isn't waiting for the AOC rules
to change. It is
taking small but significant first steps to help French
producers sell
their wines in the United States. "We didn't usually
attend wine events in
America," says Berger. "Now we are going, asking for
advice on what we
should do to improve sales. The idea is to give our producers
a higher
profile."
Last month, the government sponsored its first five-city
sales tour
Miami, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles for
producers eager to
find American importers. It's the kind of dog and pony
show the Spanish and
Australian wine industries have been taking on the road
for at least a
decade. In Los Angeles, 30 vintners poured wine tastings
for distributors.
"We decided to be proactive," says Charlotte Selles-Simmons,
a producer
whose family has been making wine in Beaujolais and Burgundy
since 1820.
She recently redesigned the domaine's labels to make
them more appealing to
Americans.
"We make it so difficult to buy French wine," she says.
"Especially for the
$10-and-below wines. Showing the varietal name on the
labels at this price
point is crucial. Then they don't have to get out their
reading glasses,
they don't have to ask for help."
It's also about looking modern, she says. The bottle has
to stand out,
which isn't easy in a crowded grocery store wine aisle.
New World wine
regions have been doing it for years. Even Italy and
Spain are sprucing up
their labels. If you don't do it, there is no hope of
creating a brand name
that consumers will remember, Selles-Simmons says.
Selles-Simmons sells her wines through Trader Joe's, but
she would like to
find a traditional distributor as well.
The model for Selles-Simmons? E.& J. Gallo's Red Bicyclette.
Gallo is showing us the way, says Berger. "Joe Gallo has
the guts to
believe in French wine, to put his money there to make
something happen. We
are very thankful for that," he says, noting that the
Gallo wines produced
in France are increasing the sales of French wine in
America.
Gallo, the savior of French wine? The chasm separating
the French
government from the traditional vintners in "Mondovino"
just got a little
wider.
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/
la-fo-frenchwine30mar02,0,604988.story?
coll=la-home-food
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