Wine related articles
French wine to spit chips
Verity Edwards and Charles Bremner
April 03, 2006
FRENCH winemakers are so worried about falling sales they are about to reserve their opposition to the practice of adding wood chips to wines to keep up with the popularity of the New World's wines.
The addition of wood shavings to steel wine vats has commonly been used in Australia to accelerate maturity and add woody aromas and vanilla overtones.
The practice eliminates the need for long and expensive storage in oak casks, as has been the practice in France.
But French Agriculture Minister Bernard Pomel has finally unveiled a plan to allow vignerons to compete with growers in Australia and the Americas.
"We have to make wine for consumers, not wine that producers dream of," said Mr Pomel, author of the plan.
France still dominates the wine trade with 40 per cent of world production by value, but its market share has been dwindling for a decade. In Britain, the world's largest wine market, Australia has long since overtaken the French. Australia holds 24 per cent of the market compared with France's 19 per cent.
Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation chief executive Sam Tolley said the French were feeling an "element of panic" over the increasing success of New World wines.
He said the French had often criticised Australian winemakers for lacking regulation. But he said the French relaxation of its own laws was recognition that Australian winemakers were on the right track. "I'm tired of hearing criticisms from the French that we don't regulate - we do regulate, it's just less intrusive," Mr Tolley said.
French winemakers are responding to the threat to their traditional European market, with the Agriculture Ministry offering a $120million rescue package for the industry.
The ministry is calling for a "new wine revolution" that would do away with the "elitist language" and dozens of categories that turn shoppers off French wine.
New World techniques, with their varied labels and strong flavours, should be encouraged in a country where winemaking is governed by volumes of century-old rules, the ministry said.
Mr Tolley said Australian winemakers had been adding oak chips to steel vats since the 1980s. "The cost of (oak) barrels is very prohibitive to the entry-level wines and we looked at alternatives and oak chips seemed a very effective way of improving the wine character," he said. "Some sectors of traditional wine production could see it (as cheating) but in general that's nonsense because it's putting wine in contact with oak in a different way."
To accommodate the trend for lower-alcohol wines, French growers will also be allowed to reduce alcohol content by 2 per cent of volume.
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