The precipitous decline of wine consumption in France was matched by a sharp fall in the sales of French wines abroad. The emergence in the 1990s of dynamic wine industries in places like Argentina and Chile, the advent of cleverly packaged New World brands like Australia’s Yellow Tail (which in just three years of existence had become the biggest-selling imported wine in the United States), and the proliferation of good, inexpensive Spanish and Italian wines cut deeply into France’s market share. In 1990, one of every three imported wines sold in the United States was French; by 2005, it was down to one of every six. Similar declines were recorded in Great Britain, traditionally the biggest market for French wines.
But increased competition alone didn’t push French bottles off the shelves; French complacency played a big part, too. “We were totally blind to the emergence of these new countries,” said Marc Sibard, the owner of the Caves Augé wine shop in Paris. “We didn’t see it.” While winemakers in other countries assiduously courted consumers, the French continued to believe that consumers would come to them—they always had. The prevailing wisdom was that French wines would find buyers simply by virtue of being French. “It was a question of attitude,” says Sibard. “We always assumed that anything labeled ‘France’ would just sell.” As one Burgundy winemaker, Patrick Hudelot, told the New York Times, “In France, there is a belief that you don’t need to market your wine, that France’s reputation is enough. And that way we are being left behind.”
But France was also being left behind because it was producing a lot of bad wine. It had too many vintners who lacked the talent, ambition, or resources needed to make quality wines, and this, too, had contributed to the falling demand—possibly in the home market, certainly abroad. Moreover, the insipid stuff was no longer confined to the two lowest categories of French wines, vins de pays and vins de table. The highest classification, Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, was now overrun with plonk, too, and many consumers, having learned the hard way that the AOC designation no longer guaranteed that a wine was necessarily even pleasant to drink, had taken their dollars, pounds, and euros elsewhere.
Controlled appellations were formally introduced in France in 1935. They were, firstly, an effort to map out the boundaries within which some premium wines, such as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, could be made and to keep these names from being used elsewhere. As such, they were a form of consumer protection—an assurance that what was on the label corresponded with what was in the bottle. More broadly, creating appellations was a way of codifying what centuries of trial and error had established: that wine was chiefly a product of the land, that some vineyards were superior to others, and that matching the right grape to the right site was the route to good wine. The aim, in other words, was to give the concept of terroir the force of law. The people who conceived the appellation system saw it as a quality-control mechanism, as well, and only the finest French vineyards were supposed to be eligible for AOC status.
As such, it was conferred sparingly in the early years. By 1940, there were only one hundred to one hundred fifty appellations (precise figures are hard to come by), and the number grew incrementally over the next several decades. Through the 1950s and ’60s, fewer than 20 percent of French vineyards fell within AOCs. But in the 1970s, regulators decided that putting more vineyards (and therefore more wines) under the AOC umbrella was the way to ensure continued French domination of the global wine market. This proved to be a disastrous gambit. By the mid-2000s, there were more than four hundred fifty appellations, encompassing over 50 percent of all French vineyards and accounting for 45 percent of France’s total wine production. Some of the newer appellations deserved the promotion, but others did not, and the AOC concept was debased as a result. A wine like Pétrus bore the AOC imprimatur, but many wines that weren’t fit for a saucepan had it now, too.
Nor was this the only way in which the reliability of AOC wines was compromised. While the Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (INAO), in Paris, oversaw the appellation system, individual districts largely governed themselves, via local winemaker associations. Every appellation had its own particular set of rules, but they all tended to regulate heavily. Much of what a winemaker did in his vineyard—from how closely he planted his vines to when he could begin harvesting to how many grapes he could pick—was subject to regulation. In theory, the many rules promoted quality; in practice, however, they often served to undercut it. Self-governance meant majority rule, and in many appellations, the interests of the underachieving majority tended to trump those of the overachieving few. Permitted crop yields were often too high (generally speaking, the lower the yields, the better the quality of the fruit). Likewise, the boundaries of some districts were drawn too generously, extending into areas that were not suitable for making good wines.
Then there was the appellation taste test, the ultimate conflict of interest. A wine produced in an appellation was not automatically entitled to advertise its noble roots; in order to claim AOC status, it had to pass a taste test meant to ensure that it conformed to the standards of the appellation—that it exhibited sufficient typicité. Although the taste tests were done blind (with the identities of the wines concealed), they were conducted by appellation insiders, and in any given year, 95 to 99 percent of the wines submitted were approved. To reject a wine was to risk inadvertently shafting a friend or neighbor or maybe even yourself, and the tasting panels thus tended to err on the side of extreme leniency. As a result, a lot of bad wine was waved through. In a survey released in 2007 by the French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir, wine industry insiders acknowledged that as many as one third of all AOC wines were unworthy of the distinction. The AOC designation no longer assured even a modicum of quality, and consequently wine buyers in many markets had soured on French wines. Alain Bazot, UFC-Que Choisir’s president, summed it up well: “For years, there has been a steady fall in the quality of many AOC wines which has completely undermined the confidence of consumers in the system.”
Perversely, some appellations, rather than rooting out the incompetent producers, seemed intent on driving away the good ones. In recent years, stars like Jean Thévenet, Didier Dagueneau, Eloi Dürrbach, Marcel Lapierre, Thierry and Jean-Marie Puzelat, Marcel Richaud, Georges Descombes, Jean-Paul Brun, and Philippe Jambon had all had wines turned down for being insufficiently typical. The reasons for the rejections varied; some of the wines supposedly had more residual sugar than allowed, others contained too much of one grape or another. These producers all made internationally acclaimed wines in appellations that mostly churned out swill and where scores of vintners were in financial distress. Given these circumstances, and the laxness with which the rules were otherwise enforced, it didn’t require an especially conspiratorial mind to wonder if petty jealousies lay behind some of the snubs.
Whatever the case, the AOC system was rotting from within. To find out what if anything was being done to save it, I went to the INAO headquarters in the fall of 2006 to meet Hervé Briand, a senior official with the organization. A tall, genial man, Briand chose his words carefully—he was a bureaucrat—but he agreed that the appellation mechanism was in shambles. Dramatically increasing the number of appellations had been a mistake, he acknowledged, one that had badly damaged the reputation of French wines overseas. “Our image wasn’t destroyed, but it was affected by the lesser quality of some of these wines,” Briand said. He conceded, too, that the taste tests had been a problem. A jury comprised of local winemakers, local wine consultants, and local merchants was undeniably a recipe for mediocrity. “They know that if they say no, the wine is not AOC, it will be a very, very big economic cost for that producer,” he said. “So there is a pressure in the mind to say yes.” He said that “perhaps” 10 percent of AOC-designated wines were substandard.
Briand told me reforms were on the way; the INAO would use its authority to revamp the taste tests and try to eliminate or at least reduce the conflicts of interest, and it would also try to exercise more control ov
er the production of wines. “The problems in the bottle are often the result of problems in the vineyard or the chais [winery]; we want to eliminate those problems,” he said. But was more regulation really the answer? Suddenly, I put myself in the role of Milton Friedman, arch libertarian. Instead of adding more rules and making things even more complicated, why not reduce the number of rules, leave winemakers free to do their thing, and let consumers decide whose wines were worth drinking? Why not make the French wine industry a beacon of sensible, market-driven reform—a shining example for the rest of the country? Briand said that back in the 1930s and ’40s, it had been lightly regulated. “The rules were not very numerous—they covered the boundaries and the grape varieties,” he said. “Historically, people in these appellations made wine the same way as one another. Not the exact same wine, but similar.” However, as the number of producers had grown, some of them had deviated from standard wine-making practices, and this had been unacceptable. “When you are in a collective way,” he said, “you have to have rules for the important things, and you can’t let someone make a wine completely differently.” It was a revealing answer, and one that snapped me out of my reverie; I was in the office of a French fonctionnaire, not a lecture hall at the University of Chicago.
Briand was implying that the issue was bad winemakers breaking good rules, but it seemed to me that the bigger problem was good winemakers being forced to violate bad rules. I mentioned Jean Thévenet, whose difficulties with his appellation in the Mâcon region had been the subject of some press coverage. “The best producer”—at this Briand caught himself and rephrased his reply—“a producer with a good feel for the market can make a wine that will be a big success without being part of the AOC. Mr. Thévenet is not a bad man; he’s a great man and makes great wine. But we have this problem everywhere in France—people making wine that is deeply different—but it can’t be like that.” The lack of conviction in his voice suggested that he wasn’t buying his own argument.
I said that perhaps the original sin was not the decision to expand the appellation system, but rather, the now-discontinued policy of showering lavish subsidies on the wine industry, which had encouraged many unqualified people to get into viticulture and then had sustained them even when the market would not. Briand pointed out that the subsidies had not traditionally gone to AOC producers; rather, they had been given to vintners who produced vins de pays and vins de table. He said these payments had been motivated less by a desire to keep inept producers afloat than by a recognition that certain regions, particularly the Languedoc, had little else to offer people in the way of work. “The subsidies were to preserve a way of life,” he explained. “These people—if they don’t have viticulture, they would have nothing.” He then invoked the same metaphor Jean Clavel had used. “Without wine, it would be a desert.”
Like a general inspecting his troops, Christian Moueix slowly made his way past a row of grapevines, looking each plant up and down and casting an approving glance at some, a dubious eye at others. We were in the vineyard of Château Bélair, in the Saint-Émilion appellation of Bordeaux, on a ridge overlooking the Dordogne plain, which on this cloudless late Saturday afternoon was bathed a brilliant shade of gold. Moueix, whose family owned Château Pétrus, in the neighboring village of Pomerol, and eight other wineries, all of them situated on what was referred to as the Right Bank of Bordeaux, had recently taken a 30 percent stake in Bélair and needed to check on the progress of its grapes. For Moueix, the harvest had started the day before at Château Trotanoy, in Pomerol, and he was now shuttling between vineyards, trying to determine where next to pick. After a cool, wet summer, the weather had turned brilliant in September, perhaps salvaging the 2007 vintage. However, rain was expected to return on Monday and Tuesday.
Two of Moueix’s properties, Château La Fleur-Pétrus in Pomerol and Château Magdelaine in Saint-Émilion, were equipped with meteorological stations, from which he received frequent updates. But it was still unclear how much precipitation would fall, and in the absence of solid information, Moueix felt he had to gamble. Having concluded that the grapes at Pétrus were not ready, he would forgo picking there on Sunday and hope that the rain, when it came, would be light and brief. Pétrus, which sat on twenty-eight acres of land and produced twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand bottles annually, was the brightest star in the Moueix constellation. It had acquired its prominence chiefly through the efforts of Moueix’s late father, Jean-Pierre, a legendary figure in the Bordeaux wine trade. The elder Moueix was a wine merchant who in 1952 became the sole agent for Pétrus, then wholly owned by the Loubat family. Although Pétrus had been making exceptional wines since 1900, it was largely unknown outside of Bordeaux, and the Pomerol appellation was a nonentity. That all changed thanks to Jean-Pierre; his tireless salesmanship gained Pétrus an international following (it became a favorite of the Kennedys) and helped turn Pomerol into one of the most prestigious wine districts in all of France. In 1964, having already bought Trotanoy and several other nearby châteaux, Moueix purchased a 50-percent stake in Pétrus, which he and Christian, who succeeded him in 1991, then propelled to even greater renown. In building up Pétrus and Pomerol, the Moueixs became among the wealthiest families in southern France and accumulated what was reputed to be one of the world’s finest private art collections, replete with works by Picasso and Francis Bacon.
Pétrus was considered by many wine aficionados to be a masterpiece in its own right. It was certainly one of the richest and most profound wines made in Bordeaux. Several weeks after visiting with Moueix, at an auction in New York, I was treated to a glass of the heralded 1998 Pétrus. Although the wine was still an infant and wouldn’t reach maturity for at least another decade, it was already sublime. Its bouquet was quintessentially Pomerol, with aromas of plums, raspberries, black truffles, flowers, and mocha. In the mouth, it was obscenely decadent; waves of lush fruit surged across the palate, pulled along by brisk acidity and voluptuous tannins. But typical of Pétrus, the heft was only one part of the equation; the wine also displayed an almost balletic grace and elegance. The aftertaste was so achingly good that I went to bed that night without brushing my teeth, in the hope that the flavors would linger till morning (sadly for me, and unfortunately for my wife, they didn’t).
Insufficiently ripe fruit did not produce that kind of wine, and though the 2007 Pétrus would be no match for the ’98, there was still a chance that it could turn out to be excellent in its own right, which was why Moueix had decided to hold off on harvesting the grapes despite the threat of rain. “With Pétrus,” he said, “I’m obliged to take the risk.”
At Bélair, the stakes were lower. Although the château occupied one of the most privileged sites on the Right Bank, the wines had not been impressive of late, and no one expected Moueix to engineer an instant turnaround, especially given the way 2007 was shaping up. He had purchased a share in Bélair in part to help his friend Pascal Delbeck, to whom the château had been bequeathed by its late owner. Delbeck was a popular figure in Bordeaux, but he was somewhat eccentric (in recent years, he had been using gypsies to harvest the grapes) and also lacked the financial resources to make a truly fine wine. Without an injection of capital, he likely would have had to sell. Moueix didn’t want that to happen to Delbeck, and he also didn’t wish to see Bélair end up in the hands of someone who might turn the wine into an inelegant fruit bomb of the sort that was now increasingly prevalent in Saint-Émilion. Moueix employed around one hundred twenty people, many of whom would now be put to work improving Bélair’s production and distribution.
A courtly, erudite sixty-year-old, Moueix was Bordeaux royalty, and as he walked through the Bélair vineyard in his neatly pressed white shirt and stylish khaki shorts, Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses perched on his nose, he had an unmistakably aristocratic bearing. But then, he knelt down in the dirt. “Look at this,” he said, beckoning to me. With one hand supporting his tall frame, he was using the other to caress a withered, gnarly grape
vine. “This vine is about eighty years old—an old soldier,” he said with a paternal smile. “You have to treat these old ones with care.” He plucked a few Merlot grapes to sample; although lab analysis could tell him the ripeness of the berries, Moueix had spent his life in the vineyards and trusted his mouth more. Earlier in the day, he had told me that he didn’t live in any of his châteaux because the sight of barren vines in winter depressed him, and as we stood there, admiring the octogenarian plant and spitting out grape skins, I suddenly understood that Moueix, although he didn’t look the part, was at heart a farmer, as attached to the land as any other.
Two days later, another Bordeaux vintner, Bernard Richard, showed me around the vineyard of his winery, Château Fourton La Garenne. As we walked along a rutted path between long rows of tall, leafy vines, Richard periodically paused to inspect clusters of grapes. Like Moueix, he picked a few berries every time we stopped in order to check on the progress of the fruit. “They still need some time,” he said, casting a worried glance at the sky. The expected rains had not materialized, but clouds were beginning to roll in. He said harvest was still at least a week away, and he would just have to hope for the best. Richard lifted up a large green leaf and plucked off several more dark berries, which he proceeded to pop into his mouth, one after the other. He then put his hand around the trunk of the vine. “They are like children, you know,” he said, “and you have to look after them the same way.”
Au Revoir to All That Page 17