Let’s face it, would you buy her book if it said that she was boycotting Panamanian wine and saving the world from Howdy Doody?

No, she’s not an idiot. She knows her marketing. Yes, she has strong opinions and likes to be vocal. I know ~thousands~ of people like her. She just knows how to sell her opinions. Other people are just happy to talk loud enough so they get the mistaken impression that other people are actually listening.

She knows she gets bad press. It drives business in.

Hmmm, I wonder if she remembers that Michel Rolland and Micro-ox are both French inventions…

Unfortunately, the above writer’s prescription couldn’t be more mistaken. Yeah, that’s the ticket. More petulant Napatude is the answer: “if the writers won’t bow down to our greatness, we’ll take our toys and go home.”

Quite frankly, Napa–and by extension California–deserves to have its livelihood messed with. It’s called the free market, and that market is finally (overdue IMO) correcting itself in a manner that no amount of spin and Napatude will overcome. The California wine industry had better be on their knees praying that the next president doesn’t pursue a strong dollar policy. If the dollar does come back, California’s problems today will seem like the good old days.

Then Parker came along in the mid 80’s with a taste for prune, oak, Brett and alcohol…oh, and he had points. And the W.S. jumped on the bandwagon. If you had the points, you sold the wine. Others jumped on board and we came up with a name for wines that didn’t taste like the grape… “fruit forward.” Food was out, we made a wine that had it all. It was about how our wine stood out from 100 other wines he tasted that day. So for the last two decades little else has mattered in a wine but size, especially if devoid of varietal aroma, and with the sweet smell of ethanol augmented by oak. We pretended that raisined clusters of Cab on the vine in late October were there seeking “physiological ripeness”. Others, when caught with their flabby wines, blamed it on global warming.

So who is the culprit who gave this ignorant writer looking for headlines and wanting to sell books the fodder she needs? Mirror, please. Our pants have been down for decades and this uptight lady isn’t exactly the first to have noticed. So what do we do? How do we respond? I say the last thing we do is pay any more attention to what these nimrods have to say. She is an idiot, they are all idiots, and so are we for letting them run roughshod over our livelihood. What we need is a revolt. I don’t care who the writer is. Sorry Jim First, we don’t send them any wine. Second, we don’t talk to them. Third we don’t feed them. And finally, if anyone asks you if you know a particular writer, you just respond, “She (he) is an idiot.” It doesn’t matter whether they in fact are; it’s just the principle of the thing.

The market is also getting more sophisticated. America’s wine drinkers are growing up and realizing that overripe cocktail wines are not the pinnacle.

California’s being left behind, and it’s too arrogant and self-absorbed to understand why. Think about this for a moment. In a period of a record weak dollar, imports are GAINING MARKET SHARE! The market backlash against California wine is so strong that it’s actually turned over a hundred years worth of international economics theory on its head. This is more than a simple public relations problem that can be served by more of the California wine industry’s usual delusional b.s.

for $30 a bottle one can get more wine at better value from imports

Hervé Lalau (Belgium & France)

Posted Feb 28, 2005 08:42 PM
I know that I’m going to get a bunch of noses out of joint here, but in my opinion, on the whole, French wine sucks.

First of all, it is way too dry for me. Even the CdP’s are too dry for me. I was at a Francophile’s house over Christmas — he handed me a glass of the “good stuff.” I drank it, and then asked for something a little fruitier. He then opened something else, and it, too, was dry as a bone.

Next, it is WAY too expensive. The very best Califronia wines run around $175/bottle. The very best French wines run around $1000/bottle. To me, this is not a result of a product that is seven times better. Please!

The really good stuff takes too damned long to be “ready to drink.” We can’t all have the palate of DRAB, and I’m just not patient enough.

I can’t read the labels.

The whole Controllee Appelation mess (whatever the hell you call it) is a joke. Why is it that there are fifth growths that are far better than some of the first growths?

Government control — bad idea!

I should disclose my bias — I don’t really like French people either. Now, generally speaking, most of the French people who are involved in the wine industry are pretty cool and I’d love to have them over to my house for dinner. But in the final analysis, when I think of French people, I’m thinking they’re all a bunch of Jacques Chiracs. Hard to separate my distaste for the French with their wine.

And when it comes right down to it, the taste of the wine just doesn’t do it for me. I mean, a nicely aged bordeaux is “fine,” but that’s really it — just “fine.” I’d rather have a young CaliCab than a six year old Bordeaux. And I’d rather have anything Aussie, an OR or WA pinot, or a Argentinian malbec.

And as G-Dead points out below, French wines are corked 2-3 times more often than California wines.

So — there it is……
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Golf&Pinot Nut, Mar 01, 2005 10:23 AM

I heard this right before the war in Iraq.

Alice Feiring, I double-dog-dare you to go make wine for a living instead of criticizing others’ work for one. You’ll lose weight.

People, trust your own palates. And memo to France, if you could only get the ripeness us Californians can…imagine the possibilities.

Vigneron, to be fair, it was an op-ed piece, not an article. A crappy op-ed, but it is what it is.