Here in London, wine buffs are toasting the exposure of the great French pinot noir scam. From January 2006 until March 2008, 13.5m liters of wine were shipped from producers in southwest France to E&J Gallo in the U.S. and sold under the Red Bicyclette label as pinot noir.
The demand for pinot noir had suddenly spiked as a result of the movie Sideways, in which this particular grape had been treated like the Holy Grail, largely to the detriment of merlot. Imagine the embarrassment when it turned out that Red Bicyclette was composed either of the scorned merlot or shiraz, with nary a droplet of pinot noir.
This week a French court delivered heavy fines to the fraudsters, ranging from the head of Ducasse wine merchants to eight co-operatives who produced the wine.
The forensic story that unfolded reminded me of the running joke about Tuscan olive oil: If Tuscany really produced all the olive oil sold with its name as the provenance, the entire province would be covered in olive orchards, leaving no room for the cities of Florence and Siena. In this case, French sleuths figured out that the volume of pinot noir headed for the Red Bicyclette bottlings was many times the actual amount, limited by regulation, produced in the Languedoc region to the southeast of Toulouse.
There are several reasons why this revelation causes much gloating in
London. First, as a country with very little wine production of its
own, England (particularly London) is about the least chauvinistic
wine market in Europe. There are merchants specializing in the best
vintages of virtually every decent vineyard in the world. This means that Brit wine buffs are highly discriminating drinkers, free of the patriotic pressure to buy or revere local.
Second, Brits are constantly complaining that if you buy wine in France anywhere outside Paris, it’s often impossible to find anything of quality that isn’t French. In many restaurants and bars, as I can attest, the attitude suggests that nothing respectable is ever produced beyond French borders.
So the Red Bicyclette experience seems to prove what the Brits have been saying for years: label integrity in France is highly suspect. Partly to keep out the highly competitive wines from Italy and Spain, French producers swamp their own markets with dubious plonk and some of it is, I would bet, not as advertised.
Third, anybody who takes a sip of a wine purporting to be pinot noir that is, in fact, either merlot or shiraz has no palate experience to bring to the table. The difference in the grapes is so vast. Pinot noir does come in varying styles from the pale and simple to the beguilingly dark and complex, and a lot of it is sold too young for it to honor the potential, but merlot or shiraz it ain’t. (Merlot never deserved the bad rap of Sideways, anyway. To be sure, it’s a tricky grape to grow and handle, and does produce a lot of mediocre wine, but at its best it’s supple and inimitable.)
Personally, I’m not celebrating the debacle of Red Bicyclette—although I am amazed that Gallo was so easily conned—because the two dominant wine regions of southwest France, Languedoc and Roussillon, now produce many wines the equals of far snootier vineyards in Burgundy and Bordeaux.
Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time a leading Californian wine maker has been burned in the Languedoc. Some years ago, Robert and Tim Mondavi, recognizing the potential of undeveloped land, attempted to buy a piece of it. At the mere mention of American interlopers, the locals rose up, led by some communist politicians, and in the end the Mondavis retired, much wiser about how irrationally xenophobic the French can be, and how short their memory is of who liberated them in 1944.
One reason the Mondavis wanted vineyards in the Languedoc was the stature of a relative newcomer to the region, Mas de Daumas Gassac. The reds from this producer have been real bargains for twenty years. The 2005 vintage, in particular, is outstanding and you can find it at around 25 bucks a bottle from several merchants, including empirewine.com.
My final caution: Never drink wine with daft names, otherwise you can be taken for a ride.
Second, Brits are constantly complaining that if you buy wine in France anywhere outside Paris, it’s often impossible to find anything of quality that isn’t French. In many restaurants and bars, as I can attest, the attitude suggests that nothing respectable is ever produced beyond French borders.
So the Red Bicyclette experience seems to prove what the Brits have been saying for years: label integrity in France is highly suspect. Partly to keep out the highly competitive wines from Italy and Spain, French producers swamp their own markets with dubious plonk and some of it is, I would bet, not as advertised.
Third, anybody who takes a sip of a wine purporting to be pinot noir that is, in fact, either merlot or shiraz has no palate experience to bring to the table. The difference in the grapes is so vast. Pinot noir does come in varying styles from the pale and simple to the beguilingly dark and complex, and a lot of it is sold too young for it to honor the potential, but merlot or shiraz it ain’t. (Merlot never deserved the bad rap of Sideways, anyway. To be sure, it’s a tricky grape to grow and handle, and does produce a lot of mediocre wine, but at its best it’s supple and inimitable.)
Personally, I’m not celebrating the debacle of Red Bicyclette—although I am amazed that Gallo was so easily conned—because the two dominant wine regions of southwest France, Languedoc and Roussillon, now produce many wines the equals of far snootier vineyards in Burgundy and Bordeaux.
Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time a leading Californian wine maker has been burned in the Languedoc. Some years ago, Robert and Tim Mondavi, recognizing the potential of undeveloped land, attempted to buy a piece of it. At the mere mention of American interlopers, the locals rose up, led by some communist politicians, and in the end the Mondavis retired, much wiser about how irrationally xenophobic the French can be, and how short their memory is of who liberated them in 1944.
One reason the Mondavis wanted vineyards in the Languedoc was the stature of a relative newcomer to the region, Mas de Daumas Gassac. The reds from this producer have been real bargains for twenty years. The 2005 vintage, in particular, is outstanding and you can find it at around 25 bucks a bottle from several merchants, including empirewine.com.
My final caution: Never drink wine with daft names, otherwise you can be taken for a ride.
You said "...although I am amazed that Gallo was so easily conned" and I could not agree more. Is there any way that Gallo's buyers could have been uneducated (or stupid) enough to realize that there just ain't that many pinot noir vines in the Languedoc? Is it possible that Gallo sends buyers who cannot taste the difference between pinot noir and merlot to France with a blank check to procure millions of liters of wine? Seems improbable.
Clive, on a personal note, I don't know if you remember me - I was an editorial assistant at CNT in 1988-89. I still have the photo you gave me of a beautiful sunset in the Middle East, and I remember fondly the lunch we shared in London some years later. All the best.