The Good Rabbi's Blog

This is not to say that French wines are not good, but rather that the vast majority of them (with the exception of Champagne, which I don't like for other reasons) are not anything better than a lot of other wines out there. In other words, the French wine industry has been relying on past glory to sell wine today. As an epicurean in today's world, I find this fascinating. The decline in the popularity of French wine has not been due to a corresponding decline in quality, but rather to the fact that so many other countries' wineries have perfected their techniques.

It used to be widely held, for example, that the French were the masters of Pinot Noir, which is an extraordinarily finicky grape. A good Pinot Noir is certainly an ethereal experience, especially when consumed in the quantities that I do. The trouble is, for every good Pinot Noir (French Pinot, that is), I've drank about five Pinots that were really not that good.

Call it "Pinot-envy" (sorry, it just seemed to flow) or whatever, but the real story is that a lot of upstarts (especially in Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, and of course, here in California) are making Pinot Noir and other wines just as well as the French do, if not better. With American interest in wine growing by the day, this could spell problems for La belle France, especially if they manage this the way they manage pretty much everything else...