Fat Bastard beats Châteauneuf du Pape. The wine fair at Bordeaux is introducing marketing techniques into the French mystery of viticulture.
The North American market for wine is becoming the largest in the world. And French wines are losing the competition to brash young vineyards in the Antipodes and the New World. American drinkers are impatient with the sediment of tradition that encrusts French wine. They are not interested in the appellation d’origine contrôlée. They prefer screw tops to the stately rituals of cork-drawing. They suspect that much vinous tradition is snobbery, and that the only safe gambit for discussing wine is to assert that the nose is better than the palate, and vice versa. They are intimidated by the 38,000 different French wines, with unpronounceable names and incomprehensible details of region, district, vineyard, producer and year of production. The only thing that most of them want to know is the colour of the wine and the variety of grape. These are not stated on French labels.
So the marketing men have shaken up the bottles of the vignerons. Out go pompous names such as Château-la-Pompe-en-Espagne. Another can of Surrender Monkey, garçon! The labels depict French clichés such as a frog in a beret on a bicycle selling garlic. They are only doing what the Anglo-Saxons have been doing since the English monarchs owned half of France. They imported the thousand wines of France, but called them all claret or burgundy. When the Hundred Years ’ War cut off supplies, they invented sherry, but called it sack. The Anglo-Saxons lack Gallic finesse. But they can still gargle a good Plonk de Plonk.