Curiously, the wines of Provence don’t seem to have developed as affectionate a following as the sunny French region that produces them.

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I’m a sucker for pioneers. Especially those that strike out into the wilderness to try making great wine where no one has tried before. This is why I was positively tickled when I learned about people making wine in Thailand a few of years ago.

My latest source of delight in this regard is Ethiopia, which frankly is a much more likely locale for winemaking than Thailand. Thanks to the famine in the 80’s, most people’s mental picture of Ethiopia looks like this:

Photo by Calips96

But Ethiopia is far from a flat wasteland. In fact, it is incredibly mountainous. A lot of it looks like this:

Photo by Moi of Ra

Presumably those who are embarking on winemaking in the country, including The Castel Group, France’s largest wine producer, are exploring these cooler, higher elevation areas of the country.

Ethiopia, with it’s large population of Coptic Christians (who make up about 60% of the population), is perhaps the most likely winemaking population in what is a mostly Muslim dominated Northeastern Africa (though it should be noted that there are significant vineyard plantings in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt). Hopefully the Ethiopians can do a bit better than their neighbors to the North, as Egyptian wine is positively dreadful.

I wish them the best of luck. Read the full story.

Thanks to Arthur for tipping me off to the story.

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I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to write a piece acknowledging progress in France towards a rational approach to laws concerning wine production and marketing. It seems like every few months for the last couple of years, I have found myself with my head in my hands, bemoaning another setback for the French wine industry at the hands of ignorant, stubborn, and backwards politicians. I’ve written so many articles criticizing French policies that some of you have even written to complain that I have something against the country, despite my professed love for French wine.

This past week however, the French government proved that they are capable of at least some progress towards preventing what I have characterized in the past as the impending disaster that domestic wine production and consumption in France.

In what they themselves characterized as a series of sweeping reforms, President Sarkozy and his cabinet finally made good on their election year promise to change the laws that have kept France from being able to compete on a global scale at the lower ends of the wine marketplace because of restrictions on winegrowing and winemaking practices.

Here’s my understanding of the implications of the new changes:

THE OLD
Until recently wine could fall into three different categories in France, each with different regulations and implications for its marketability:

Appellation d’Origine Controlee or AOC — in order to qualify for this top designation, which supposedly guarantees quality as well as geographic typicity from one of 457 different locales in France, wines must conform to the strict rules of their particular appellation, including where the grapes can be grown; what grape varieties are permitted; what ripeness the grapes are allowed to reach before harvest and the maximum alcoholic strength of the resulting wine; the amount of fruit produced per acre; the way vines may be pruned; how densely the vines may be planted; how the vines are trained; what if any irrigation is allowed; and how the wine must be made including whether or not the grapes must be destemmed, whether sugar is allowed to be added, and many other minutia, including the fact that the wines must be labeled by their place names only — no varietal names on the label (except in Alsace). AOC wines (and the grapes to produce them) command the top prices in the marketplace

Vin de Pays — Wines that do not qualify for AOC have a chance to be classified as VdP if they can meet another set of stringent requirements including the grapes having been grown in a specific place and not being blended with grapes from elsewhere; being made of only certain grape varieties; having a minimum alcoholic strength; produced in less than a maximum quantity; and again using only strictly approved winemaking techniques, and no indication of grape varieties on the label (though this rule was not strictly enforced in recent years) . VdP wines make up nearly half of France’s wine production, sell for less than AOC wines, and make up the bulk of what most people drink every day in France.

Vin de Table — If a winemaker chooses to not or cannot adhere to AOC regulations or VdP, then they have no choice but to label their wines Vin de Table, which is as good as a death sentence for their wine. Such wines, which make up around 10% of France’s wine production are quite cheap and often even un-saleable.

THE NEW
The new regulations “replace” this old system with a new one that also has three tiers, but different rules. Here is my understanding of the new changes, which I have pieced together from various sources, none of which seem truly authoritative (so feel free to correct my understanding):

Appellation d’Origine Protegee or AOP — this designation corresponds to the existing AOC designation and is unfortunately virtually unchanged by the new regulations. I say unfortunately because some changes to these regulations are also needed.

Indication Geographique Protegee or IGP — this category of “protected geographical region” wines replaces the VdP designation and significantly reduces the restrictions required to qualify for this designation. Among other things, wines with this designation can now:

- be made from any varietal the winemaker may choose
- be made from grapes grown in two or more different regions
- be vinified using more inexpensive oak chips instead of barrels
- incorporate some winemaking additives like tannins, acids, etc.
- be labeled not only with the grape variety, but also branded as the winemaker sees fit

Vignobles de France — this category of “Wines from France” would incorporate all wines that do not fall into the other two categories and has the same freedom of restrictions as the IGP category.

These are the first serious changes that France has made to its wine laws in decades, and in my opinion, the first move in the right direction in a long while. The new laws will allow a huge portion of the French wine industry to make better wine, or to make wine that can compete better with the Australian, American, and South American brands that have squeezed French wines off of supermarket shelves and off the tables of Americans and Europeans.

Of course, one of France’s main problems continues to be the drop in its own national consumption of wine, driven by younger generations who seem to favor beer and mixed drinks to their national beverage. This problem can only be alleviated by another direly needed set of sweeping reforms to the laws that currently thwart all effective advertising, marketing, and even journalism about wine, including prohibiting the sale of wine over the Internet.

These latest regulations are a ray of hope in what has been a perpetually gloomy future for the middle and lower tiers of the French wine industry. I hope these are the first of many changes that will free France’s winemakers and winegrowers to compete better on the world market, and to ultimately just make better wine, if only because I want to drink it.

Viva la France!

Thanks to a number of you readers who sent me articles about this development.

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Escaping the generalization that the best Pinot G comes from Alsace, Northeastern Italy and Oregon, we find a splendid example from California.

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Fresh and bright, medium-bodied and acidic, finishing with a tangy squirt of lime.

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I do not need to tell you that I’m a geek of the first degree when it comes to wine, but you may not know that my interests in the minutiae of life extend beyond the wine world into lots of other areas. When it comes right down to it, I just love knowing how things work. And why.

Which is why I absolutely fell for Harold McGee when I first encountered his book, On Food and Cooking, which might as well have been titled: The Geeks Guide to the Kitchen. McGee took a scientist’s approach to deconstructing most of the chemical and physical processes of the kitchen.

Occasionally McGee turns his attention to the world of wine. Today he published an article summarizing some research on a compound with the lovely name of Rotundone, which is the chemical responsible for, among other things, the peppery taste found in wine. This is not particularly breaking news. I wrote a bit about the discovery and research into Rotundone in wine last year.

What caught my attention about McGee’s article, however, were the adjunct (or perhaps separately researched) findings that everyone perceives Rotundone with different levels of sensitivity, and about 20% of people may not be able to perceive it at all.

That’s right. One out of five people may not be able to perceive one of the signature flavors in tens of thousands of wines from around the world from Australian Shiraz, to Central Coast Syrah, to Cotes du Rhone. And some people who are hyper-sensitive to the compound may think some wines with elevated levels of Rotundone taste downright nasty, while the rest of us may just enjoy the spicy qualities of the same wine.

Research like this makes me giggle. I privately believe that the more research we do, the more we’ll find out that there is quite a lot of variation in the way that people perceive the complex and particular flavors in wine.

I delight in the fact that such random (and/or genetic) physiological variation in what we taste completely undermine the notion that wine tasting is objective, or that some people can be thought of as authorities on how wines taste. Sure there are a few objective measures that can be used to distinguish sound wine from flawed, but if a large portion of the wine drinking public (including some critics) can’t taste something in wine, does it really matter?

Perhaps more realistically, just because I say that a wine smells like bacon-fat and tastes like raspberry-jam does that mean it really does? The answer, it seems to me, increasingly becomes: only if you happen to taste and smell the same things.

So remember that the next time you read a tasting note or a score from a critic. There’s only one way to figure out what you will like, and that is to put it in your mouth. Whether you can trust someone else to help you narrow your choices should be purely a matter of trial and error.

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Wine, with its image of elegance, isn’t often thought of as a partner for such downscale fare as barbecued meat. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

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Quite a mouthful of Rhone red, excellent structure and balance; a fine partner with smoked meat.

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