Free Republic

After long scorning the international appetite for “vulgar” wine, France joined the fray yesterday and allowed growers to make and market their product in the fruity fashion of the New World. Wood chips, added tannin and other “foreign” techniques will be tolerated in a new category of mid-quality wine that will be defined by grape variety rather than origin. Traditional methods have stood France in good stead for centuries but it now exports fewer bottles than Italy and Spain and is losing ground to Australia In a heresy for traditionalists this means, for example, that you may grow gewurtztramminer, the...

THE French are arrogant, it is said, and when it comes from the mouth of a Frenchman, things get interesting. Even more so when the Frenchman, a wine producer from south-western France, delivers a red wine called Arrogant Frog to the Australian market. Jean-Claude Mas, a fourth-generation wine producer from the Languedoc region, admits the label, which arrived in Australia last year, is designed to be provocative. But it is also designed to help him penetrate an Australian industry battling a historic wine glut. But things are not as bad here as they are in France, which is what prompted...