The Gauls are hitting back with good, affordable stuff
Time was when the only wines anyone knew about were from France: like Scotch for whisky, French wines practically defined the category, and all the rest was considered ‘plonk’.
Then came liberalisation: in 2001 the central government removed imported wines and spirits from the ‘restricted list’, paving the way for their import and sale at retail stores. A couple of years later, came the Duty Free Entitlement Scheme (now called the Served From India Scheme), permitting earners of foreign exchange to set off part of that income against duty on wines and spirits.
Sales of imported wines grew from some 37,000 cases in 2001-02 to about 220,000 cases in the last fiscal, with the share of French wines estimated as having declined from 80 per cent to just 35 per cent. The biggest gainers were wines from Australia (Jacob’s Creek, Yellow Tail), Italy (Antinori), and South Africa (Kingfisher Bohemia).
However, the French don’t take things lying down. And they are making a strong charge to change the perception of French wines as being very good and very expensive or not so good, both by bringing good-quality wines from the south of France as well as by becoming more consumer-friendly.
A major barrier to consumer acceptance of lower-priced French wines is their sheer complexity. Even today, few French wine labels declare what grapes have been used to produce their offerings — you are somehow supposed to know. Consequently, few consumers are enthused by the prospect of paying upwards of Rs 1,000 for a bottle of something they have no idea about. Fortunately, this is changing, at least for some entry-level wines, whose back labels declare grapes and percentages.
Equally interesting is the move to market wines from the Languedoc-Roussillon region — the south of France, the coastal area between Nice and the Spanish border. This is where all of Europe comes to holiday and party: Cannes, Saint-Tropez, the port of Marseille, and Montpellier, famous names in both literature and legend. Being a warmer area (than the rest of France) wines from this area are a lot fruitier and easy to drink. Indeed, it’s difficult to find a bad wine from here.
There is the Sud de France organisation promoting wines from the region on a generic basis, and there are specific companies fanning out to promote their brands in India. One such company is Gerard Bertrand, whose regional director Jake Jacob (born in Asansol, holding an Australian passport, married to a New Zealand girl, living in the south of France) held tastings recently in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The company exemplifies all that’s good in French wine: close to flawless quality, combining modern fruit-forward flavours and enough regional character to make them distinctive.
Owned and run by ex-rugby international, Gerard Bertrand, the eponymous company has some 625 acres of vineyards in the area, as well as enough partnerships to make available as extensive a range of wines as anyone would want, from high-end down to value-based varietals.We tasted eight, and were blown away by the 90-point Domaine l’Aigle Single Vineyard Chardonnay and the 93-point l’Aigle Single Vineyard Pinot Noir, while the 88-point red and white wines from the Chateau L’Hospitalet in the La Clape area near Narbonne were just superlative.
Good stuff, this. The outstanding five-course dinner at Caperberry no doubt helped accentuate the perceived quality of the wines, and one looks forward to importer and distributor Aspri Spirits making the wines available all over. Santé!
[Alok Chandra is a Bangalore-based wine consultant]
