Listen to this person.
Think about it in terms of beer. There are plenty of great Microbrews in Seattle which you can’t find outside of the Pacific Northwest and plenty of East Coast brews you can’t find here. Arguably, the ones you can find are the more populist, less distinctive ones that have achieved enough mass market dominance to be worth marketing. As a result, through no overt conspiracy, Seattle is keeping the “best” beers for itself.
You’re very kind. Thank you for the compliment.
I am not in the business of importing or selling alcoholic beverages. I would really like to hear from any Dopers that are however, and be corrected by them. That said, my reading of griffin1977’s links and 27 CFR leads me to agree with silenus that BATFE or DHS are not largely concerned with the content of imported beer, but rather the labeling of the products. This pdf chart lists the malt beverages that require additional information as to their composition or manufacturing technique before being imported. There are very few products that require this additional information.
Anecdotally, I’ve consumed more than a few Trappist beers, and I don’t believe that Rochefort or Westmalle make separate nerfed versions within their microscopic production just for the U.S. market. (If so, then I really need to get to Belgium!)
U.S. States, OTOH, have their own restrictions concerning appropriate alcoholic beverage for their citizens—e.g. Utah’s prohibition of draft beer over 3.2% alcohol by volume—and the ttb site specifically mentions that DHS/ICE/ what-have-you will not release, within that state, alcoholic beverages that violate the laws of that given state.
Oddly, there are new requirements to certify that “natural wines” imported into the U.S. are the result of “proper cellar treatment.” See 26 USC 5382. Never heard of these requirements before, as well as the requirement that the producer of the alcoholic beverage be registered with the FDA. Wonder what sparked introduction of those regs? Very interesting and I wouldn’t have found out about it absent this thread.
While you are correct that virtually all European grape vines are grafted onto American root stock because of phylloxera, it is not at all correct to think that because of this that there is little difference in the wines produced in Europe and the US.
The environmental variables aside (and I hesitate to even say that because they are very important - that’s terrior after all) the vines themselves are also different. The grapes produced do not pick up any characteristics from the root the vine is grafted onto.
On the original topic - I work for a marketing firm that specializes in marketing wines and spirits. I know of no producer, French or not, who intentionally holds back their best wines from export. They send them where demand is greatest and where they can make the most money from them… which lately is not the USA. China and Japan have become huge Bordeaux markets.