Why does French wine suck so bad?

[Fake Boris]

Don't be splitting hairs in 4... he bought a bottle of Red. Beret.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
It would require a subscription to Wine Spectator or a similiar review magazine. Simply knowing the region is worthless. I want to know if that winery makes good wine or not. The French make it even worse because normally the label doesn't even say what types of grapes are in the wine. Thus unless you have thousands of different wineries memorized you have no clue what you're buying.

That's why it takes to much effort.

Any decent wine store can give you some good info, including what grapes are used. Most will post Parker and other ratings, and some will keep copies of wine mags around you can peruse.

I still find non-French wine a better bet, but I dont spend the amounts to get into the really good stuff. But I dont think id be put off by the complexity. If you are, stick to Bordeaux. Theres only so many Grand vins classe from there, plus a couple of dozen vins bourgeois. You can easily get a publication giving you info on all of them, and work your way up.

[Dinner]

http://www.wineloverspage.com/bucko/bucko0505.phtml

It's under Cote du Rhone wines.

They list the price as $11 so it does seem like the hippy Whole Foods supermarket has crappy prices on just about everything.

[Dinner]

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

That's where I bought it. I like their selection but their prices are outrageous. I don't think I will be shopping there any more.

[Thorgal]

French wines are overpriced, everybody knows that. I would dare to say that Spanish wines have the best quality-price relation by far.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

That's where I bought it. I like their selection but their prices are outrageous. I don't think I will be shopping there any more.

ah , a place like that isnt going to be able to really help much. My impression is they can have some pretty good deals on some things, and yeah, interesting selections (on beers also) but if you cant trust em.

Now if you want something thats really cheap but drinkable, theres Chuck Shaws at Trader Joes. But I wouldnt go spending $20 for a French wine i didnt know about there.

Here we have a chain called Total Wines, which is like the Borders of Wine and Beer. Huge, impressive selection, good prices, and lots of help.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Thorgal
French wines are overpriced, everybody knows that. I would dare to say that Spanish wines have the best quality-price relation by far.

Inconsistently. Freixenet, for ex, isnt particularly underpriced (though its been a while).

[Thorgal]

Of course lately they are waking up and prices are raising. Most international brands being the first. But still you can find for instance good Riojas incredibly cheap.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Thorgal
French wines are overpriced, everybody knows that. I would dare to say that Spanish wines have the best quality-price relation by far.

This is not true in France though.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Because the weather in Frane is notorious for being wildly inconsistent. The best French wines are among the very best, but sometimes it's just a bad year.

There hasn't been a bad year for Bordeaux since 1997, and even that wasn't particularly bad.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Buy from this place.

http://www.neipperg.com/vignoblesvonneipperg/Neippergweb/aiguilgb.htm

I've got some bottles of the 2001, and it makes me want to weep man-tears. And not just because it costs £20 a bottle.

[Zoid]

Meh, french wines are like any other. Some are crap, some are good. But I'm not heavily into french wines. I like a good Rioja Gran Reserva or South African wines like Two Oceans (fruity and easy to drink). Portugese wines like Periquita is also always a good choice

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Thorgal
French wines are overpriced, everybody knows that. I would dare to say that Spanish wines have the best quality-price relation by far.

I have loved all the Spanish wines I've tried except of Sherry. The Spanish do indeed make some fine wines which sell for reasonable prices.

[Spiffor]

Re: Why does French wine suck so bad?

Originally posted by Oerdin
This is a serious question. Today I bought a bottle of "Red Beret" Cote du Rhone wine for $16.99. It is crap. If it was grown in California, Chile, or Australia it would be a $2.99 per bottle. I have noticed a trend that there are a lot of over priced generic blend French wines which are sold at a premium but which are actually total rubbish. Why are so many French wines garbage?

Several reasons:

- French wine is overpriced abroad for the very same reasons as cadillacs. And yes, it will only last so long. This is the big huge reason: you wouldn't have complained if your Red Beret had cost 3$, as it would have been an ordinary cheap wine. Being an expensive (and thus supposedly good) wine, you're disappointed that it's bad.

- Many French wineyards use the same methods as foreign wineries: mechanized harvest (all grapes get picked, including the sucky ones), and a very very artificial vinification process. As a result, the wines are on the low-ish end on the quality scale, like most of chat is marketed.

- Bordeaux insists about infecting its wines with as much "wood" as possible. Bordeaux wines are now more homogenized and all intend to taste of wood, which actually sucks (it used to be prestige, as it showed the winery was using wood casks - but to anybody who doesn't care about that the taste is terrible)

- Quite a few wineries now try their best to increase productivity, in order to increase produced quantities. The price of French wine has been falling for years because of the surproduction (and the fact that the international consumer is coming to his senses), so many producers want to offset the small prices increasing their quantities (thus worsening the surproduction).
Increased quantities result in less selection among the grapes, bad terrain being used to grow grapes, grape-trees geared to produce as many grapes as possible (which are thus full of water instead of being tasty).

I don't know red beret, but I highly doubt its crappiness has to do with the cooperative-wineries system. Wine produced there is usually marketed with its place of origin being prominent. Upon reading this article, it seems the producer (an American of French origin) has done the wine all by himself.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by dannubis
indeed... @ USD 17 Côte du Rhone

I was picking grapes for 15€ Côtes du Rhône last september, and it's worth every Euro of it. Of course, the guy is an excellent man, and he loves his wine infinitely more than he loves money. It's just that the wine he does is great.