How true is it that the French keep all the best wine for themselves, only exporting poorer wines? Certainly, the statement is pretty widely repeated. Notably, it only ever seems to be said about the French and not about any other wine exporting nations.
If true, how does this work? Is it a decision made by wine producers to only sell their best wines in the domestic market, or through some other means (i.e. government edict)?
There are wines you can only get in France, mainly because they aren’t economical to export. That would possibly include some very high end wines but it’s mainly the French table wines that are used for daily meals. It’s not true in any meaningful sense that there are top end wines that are purposely kept back.
Besides, wines that are equal in every way to the top French wines are produced in many countries; there would be no point holding them back.
It isn’t true at all as a general claim. My ex-wife’s family is one of the foremost gourmet cheese importers into the U.S. which has a lot of overlap with the wine industry and they intertwined. France does have some protectionist food, wine, and liqueur wine laws that are enforced but the vineyards are still businesses first and foremost and they want top $$$$ (and I do mean dollar) for their best products. It is much more true for some of their food items as opposed to wine.
Some top French cheeses are raw milk products that are generally banned in the U.S. by the FDA. That is a consumer-side restriction however rather than a producer restriction. The same thing can be said some high-quality European meat products. Like any high-end product, I have no doubt that certain vintages have only been released in a limited market due to mystique or even simple logistics if it is a very limited batch and there are already enough buyers buyers in the domestic market to fill the limited supply. That happens with lots of different types of high-end products including automobiles.
It is a hassle to get approval to import small batch products in most countries including the U.S. and may not be worth the bother. It doesn’t matter that much anyway. The best California vineyards can compete quite well with or even surpass the French producers in terms of quality for most products with a reasonable demand.
I don’t think it’s true. I recently read an article about french wines losing market shares in other countries for a variety of reasons (labelling totally opaque like “A.O.C.”, reliance on concept like “terroirs” instead of for instance grape type, refusal to adapt to changing customers’ tastes in foreign countries, etc…). It was nowhere mentionned that wine producers would keep the best stuff for the domestic market (and why would a business want to do that anyway? More potential customers means higher prices). At the contrary, they are worried by this decline in exports.
And as far as I know (which means not much because I’m not interested in wines) it’s rather the other way around. The best (or at least the most famous and costly) wines rely much more on exports than more ordinary wines.
The only thing I can think of which might be related with what you mentionned is that France has many wines from small producers and/or small production areas that are virtually unknown outside France (or for that matter even within France) whose production is bought essentially entirely by French wine-lovers.
In general, economists say that the best products get exported. If you are going to pay to ship something a long way, then it makes more sense to ship a more expensive product where the profit margin will make up for the cost of shipping.
For wine, an estate producing a small amount of wine may not find it profitable to market their wine internationally, find an agent, make special labels, etc.
I don’t know about wine but for exported European beer the problem is not cunning Europeans keeping the good stuff for themselves, but the US import restrictions brewers have to meet turning perfectly good beer into the swill you get over here (Guinness and Pilsner Urquell being good examples of this).
When I think of it, it might be true to a larger extent. For instance, the wine I’m the most likely to buy is “Bourgueil” for red wine and “Gewurtzstraminer” for white wine. Those are hardly obscure wines in France, and produced in large quantities (obviously not as large as, say, “Bordeaux” wines, for instance, but still large enough to be found everywhere in France) but I’m not sure they’re marketed much in foreign countries (at least I don’t remember seeing them mentioned outside France).
Note that neither of these two wines are considered top quality wines (although it might be that a top-notch Bourgueil is much better and costly than a just good Bordeaux) . It just happens that I like them and that they’re reasonnably priced. My point was just that many french wines might not be much known/marketed/sold in foreign countries.
I am not sure that I understand what you are saying here—Can you explain what you mean a bit?
This is also true of Portuguese wines, although that market is opening up more in recent years. It used to be that you could only get Mateus or Lancer’s in the US, both bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. It was available because it was produced in huge quantities and well marketed. Good Portuguese wines are normally produced at very small vintners in very small quantities, with some notable exceptions. The larger runs tend to be the product of wine cooperatives, with dozens of tiny vineyards bringing their grapes to a central processor.
Not true. I’ve been to many, many, French vineyards. It’s pretty much all for sale. As others have said, there are many wines it is simply not economic to export, often, as mentioned, because they’re produced in such small quantities. What does happen is that many vintages are limited in amount, so in good years they sell the excess locally as the local Vin du Table in bars and restaurants.
Gewurtzs are hardly rare (odd, though, that you think of it as a gewurtz, rather than a n Alsace. To me, anyway), but not terribly common. Oddly, they pair well with spicy Asian food, preferably on warm spring days. A Bourgueil is a perfectly fine wine, but it is what one thinks of as a “red table wine”, isn’t it?
I think the poster may be thinking of the French equivalent of say, Diamond Mountain, von Strasser, or Peju; it isn’t like Napa is holding those back, it’s that with productions in the 1,000 case a year range, not a lot of people have really heard of them. Surely France has wonderful, spectacular wines, that sell in France but not elsewhere because they are discovered by people driving to wine producing regions on holidays and buying them.
I feel like a wine snob for even having heard this… In the early 1900’s an outbreak of a plant disease pretty much obliterated the French wine industry. Most of it was replanted using rootstock from California. So the argument could be made that there isn’t much difference at all between the various regions of France and California other than a few environmental variables.
That would be because there are a number of wines from Alsace, and the gewurtz isn’t even the most common (that would be the Riesling) . So just saying “an Alsace” wouldn’t mean much
No. A table wine is the lowest “grade” of wine in France (the order is “vin de table”, “vin de pays”, “AOVDQS” and AOC). There’s no obligation regarding its production area. It’s typically a mix of wines of different origins (even different countries) assembled to obtain whatever end product the winery wants, at a low price.
The Bourgeuil is an AOC, like the most prestigious French wines. But all AOC aren’t made equals, and within the same AOC there are considerable differences in reputation/quality/price from one producer to another.
Possibly useful link : french wine guide. See for instance the page about the most expensive french wines
I don’t know these wines, but yes I understood that the poster was thinking of exceptional wines. It’s just that it occured to me that maybe even relatively common french wines might be unknown outside France (instead of only wines coming from really small producers/areas). According to your post, it seems that it’s not the case.
It’s pretty easy to find Gewurtztraminer in the U.S; you’re just not going to find any that are as good as the Alsatian examples you’re used to. Though Navarro, Claiborne and Churchill, and Husch come close, IMHO. I would definitely call some of Navarro’s Gewurtzs, as well as Gewurtz from Domaine Weinbach, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht, Trimbach or Hugel as “top quality.” Lord knows that Weinbach’s Gewurtzs are priced that way…
Never had a Bourgueil, but I have had Chinon, and I understand it can be tough even for fans to tell the two AOCs apart blind. Joguet’s Chinon is the best wine match I’ve ever had for herb-encrusted roast chicken, and also a wine I’d call top quality. I’ve not had U.S. Cabernet Franc in the U.S. that tasted like Chinon, at least not intentionally. Loire Cab Francs can be a bit…herbal, with flavors you generally don’t see U.S. producers setting out to duplicate.
For the OP, it’s not pissy-ness or chauvinism that explains the French not wanting to export their best wines to the U.S. Often, the amounts made are so small that it’s just not worth it to deal with the joy that is the BAFTE—separate labeling requirements for one—and finding a distributor/importer.
Beers like Guinness taste completely different (and much worse) in the US, is the main reason for this is that they must be brewed to meet US import specifications (actually the the “lowest common denominator” of all the different state regulations).
I’m pretty sure you were being asked what regulations specifically. American craft brewing is a complete free-for-all, and I’ve never heard of breweries having major regulatory problems moving into out-of-state markets.
nm, wrong account
What I meant to say (when I forgot to log out above), is that I, too, would like to hear of what specifically these regulations are. I don’t know of any regulation that would require European beers to have a special US-export only recipe. You can get all sorts of unpasteurized, bottle-conditioned, “living” beers here without any problem.
I don’t know which of the multitude of different reg’s has the most affect (feel free to trawl through them). The point is that US brewers do not have to have their beer approved for the US import process, if they did I’m sure alot of the “craft” ones would not be approved.
I’m going to call “bullshit” on that until some cites are produced. The reason Guinness tastes different over here (to you) is because it is a living thing that changes when being shipped. AFAIK, there are no US Import Regulations relating to how a beer is brewed. Labeled, yes. Brewed, no.