“The importance of French wine”

This is the title of a very provocative article by Brad Haskel in The Huffington Post.  As Haskel reminds us, “A high compliment about an Australian Chardonnay, or a California Chardonnay was that it tasted Burgundian, or was made from clones of the best producing regions of Burgundy. A great Cabernet Sauvignon, or a red Bordeaux blend, may have other names, such as Meritage in the new world, but the best compliment is still to call it a great Bordeaux blend.” Is it still true now?

While traveling in California, I’m very often asked if such Chardonnay tastes like a Burgundy Chardonnay or if this Pinot Noir is as good as a Burgundy one. Sometimes, wine makers admit they travel to France to visit Burgundy and try to figure out what make their wines so different from their French countreparts. It is, at least, the position of the “terroir-ists”, either in the New World or in the Old World.

This is true also of Malbec. First grown in Cahors, it is still the emblematic grape of the area. When it was imported to Argentina, the grape evolved in a very different way, thanks to Nicolas Catena.  According to David Kellaway, “what Nicolas Catena has contributed to the industry is a willingness to experiment with “microclimates” - the effect of altitude and local climatic conditions on grapes; moreover openly stating that climate is as much of an influence on a wine’s “terroir” as is the soil.” Catena put Malbec back on the wine scene and Cahors got bypassed by its younger child.

But the wheel is turning again. Wine makers, journalists and enologists are aware of the heritage coming from France. If “Chablis” is now a generic word in the US or in Australia, it’s not by chance: it is the homage paid by the New World to centuries of French know-how.  Cahors is on its way to recover its own history and to remind the world that Malbec was born on its slopes and was for many centuries the favorite wine of the kings, emperors and popes. The recent International Malbec Days showed the multiple expressions of the Cahors Malbec - from round and fruity to complex and intense.  It shows that French wine is still the benchmark of most wine expressions, whether it is from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec.