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Merde! Chinese Wines Did What to French Wines?
By Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com
In France, the litany of job reductions continues. Today, Air France added 2,000 jobs to be eliminated to the 4,000 it had already announced. Late October, automaker PSA Peugeot Citroën announced 4,000 layoffs. Banks—Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Société Générale, and Crédit Foncier—chimed in with their own job reductions. Then there were Areva, the largely government-owned nuclear-power conglomerate, drug maker Sanofi, ferry operator Seafrance (in liquidation), and newspapers—Les Échos, Parisien-Aujourd'hui, France-Soir, and Comareq (in liquidation). It’s tough out there. And now, France’s heavily subsidized signature industry—wines—got slapped in the face. By China.
In a blind winetasting competition in Beijing on December 14, five wines from Bordeaux and five wines from Ningxia—all priced between 200 and 500 yuan—were wrapped in black cloth, tagged with a number, and served to ten French and ten Chinese wine judges. The judges spent 40 minutes tasting and ranking the wines and another 30 minutes discussing them. Then the results were announced: the top four wines were Chinese!
- Grace Vineyard Chairman’s Reserve 2009
- Silver Heights The Summit 2009
- Helan Qing Xue Jia Bei Lan Cabernet Dry Red 2009
- Grace Vineyard Deep Blue 2009
- Barons de Rothschild Collection Saga Medoc 2009
The other losers in alphabetical order: Calvet Reserve De L’Estey Medoc 2009, Cordier Prestige Rouge 2008, Kressmann Grande Réserve St-Émilion AOC 2008, Mouton Cadet Reserve Medoc 2009, and Silver Heights Family Reserve 2009.
“Sacrilège,” screamed the headline of the French business daily, La Tribune. But the top French dailies, Le Monde and Le Figaro, seemed to suppress the news, quite understandably. The people have enough to worry about.
“Yesterday’s tasting suggested Ningxia wines can hold their own against bigger Bordeaux brands,” wrote Jim Boyce, organizer of the Ningxia vs Bordeaux Challenge, and administrator of www.grapewallofchina.com/. Ningxia, an autonomous region in Northwest China, appears to be the up and coming wine-growing area.
OK, French wines have been beaten with some regularity ever since the Judgment of Paris on May 24, 1976, when, to the utter and never fully digested shock of the French wine establishment, a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay beat their Bordeaux counterparts—and put California on the international wine map.
“We never claimed this was the Beijing version of The Judgment of Paris,” Boyce said modestly. The tasting wasn’t designed to compare the best of Bordeaux to the best of Ningxia, but, as Boyce writes in his follow-up post on the tasting:
“We used a price range to compare top Ningxia wines with bigger and better-known Bordeaux brands sold here by major distributors—brands consumers are more likely to know and have access to.”
Of course, wine competitions can be criticized. The French wines were handicapped by an import tax of 48% (another detail of why China has a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world). But then, Chinese wines got hit with consumption and value-added taxes that reduced the gap to 20%, according to Boyce. And the most expensive Bordeaux retailed for rmb350 while the winning Ningxia retailed for rmb488. Quite a price difference.
But who could have imagined a few years ago spending $77 on a bottle of good Chinese wine to be shared over a romantic dinner? The French must have had similar thoughts about California wines in the aftermath of May 24, 1976.
And for more upheaval in the old world order.... PROST! Germany lost the beer war, and China won.
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Interesting but MASSIVELY misleading. This won't help stabilize the OTT journalistic pro-china-on-everything trend...Come on, seriously, Calvet, Mouton C & Cordier vs. Grace Chairman, Silver & Helan?!! As many other posts already wrote, this is swill vs. flagships or, at very least, what are deemed to be flagships. Definitely NOT in same categories. Consumption & value-added & other don't take it down to 20%: Let's just look at the massive margins for Grace for one (gift box, paper & packaging?); clearly nobody actually conducted a market visit to see price difference. Some posts also mention NW juice additions; no comment but spot on for some. Disappointing our tasting friends even allowed this line-up or mentioned the Judgement of Paris when by next week all that will be remembered is the headline. They honestly should know better. Now if you really wanted to make it exciting there are some pretty decent whites coming out of Tibet, Xinjiang, Gansu and elsewhere that, at a certain price point and without expecting fireworks, actually hold their own against others (and where I am somewhat confident the juice is in fact produced here though who's to say without hard evidence???).
there is more arable land suitable for fine wine growing in china than in the rest of the world, combined. the chinese have been importing the technology and knowledge for the past ten years. what they have failed in so far is instilling a caring attitude among their winery and vineyard workers. as minor flaws and big flaws, mistakes, alike are cumulative in winemaking. they are so far unable to produce wines to their fullest potential despite all the other advantages. if they can create a cultural change in their workforce (unlikely since this would have to come from the top down) china can overtake australia and chile pretty fast, maybe hold its own with california and tuscany. bordeaux wines stopped being interesting decades ago to anyone who acquired a bit of self confidence in their own taste.
You guys don't see the good news in this story : The Chinese are developping a taste for WINES!!
The JAps already have, now the Chinese. Who gives a flying fuck what wine won the world title! French wines are so varied that you can taste a different flavour each day of your life! That is living, if you be wine lover! The more people who drink wine the more people who become a little less swine. In vino veritas! (within the limits of two to three glasses per day and getting your dose of antioxidants to boot!)
Just to give you an historical perspective, ('cos it vinifies me so), the first recorded wine competition in the world occurred in France in 1223 when Philip Augustus organised wine tasting in PAris, then recognised as capital of the western world. More than seventy wines were presented from as far off places as Hungary,Mosel, CYprus, Malaga and of course the regions of France. THe King and his jury crowned the Commanderia wine of Cyprus as the Pope of wines. Ten wines were named at Bishop level. And around five to ten wines were declared "dunce" brews. So there you go! A great tradition was born.
Every year we will have wines from different regions being crowned, and it is only normal. Wines are like women. Nobody owns feminine beauty! Lay on MAcduff and glory to he who shouts, Santé!
As for layoffs in France, that is part of reset. Wake up call to Europe as to USA! What Reaganomics started will now unfurl. Financial karma bitchez. So stop bitching...its written in the wind, and its up to Europe and USA to find appropriate remedies. But it will be a long hard road, as Reaganomics took us down the "free lunch, hubristic "happy few" lane" and now its pay up time.
"You guys don't see the good news in this story : The Chinese are developping a taste for WINES!"
I think it's mostly fashion. Conspicious consumption of foreign brands - which then get iced (despite being red) & drunk with a twist of lemon. The height of sophistication.
(They may eventually become true wine connoisseurs. I had a few tea shop contacts, and there's a deep appreciation of tea. But wine has a few thousand years catching up to do.)
Wine snobs, ughh!!
"A survey of hundreds of drinkers found that on average people could tell good wine from plonk no more often than if they had simply guessed."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/apr/14/expensive-wine-cheap-plonk...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
http://hempnews.tv/2010/02/22/comparison-alcohol-vs-marijuana/
why is one called a snob when interested in and anjoying good wine?
off course there is al lot of snobbery and pseudo-sophistication in the wine world, but there is a difference between a good bottel of wine for 15 dollar and a really bad wine for 2 dollar. And i think i will know the difference when i taste it. Porbably i won't know the diffeence between an goed 15 dollar bottle and a good 30 dollar bottle.
but maybe we should all drink cheap shit from china while our good but snobbery product are exported and sold to all the snobbery chinese. and in the meantime we can all nivelate ourselves to the level of the people who call others snobs when interested in anything above the level of tv watching eating fastfood en not knowing anuthing at all.
Consider this:
http://www.123helpme.com/bandwagon-snob-and-veblen-effects-view.asp?id=1...
Full paper:
http://areadocenti.eco.unicas.it/mbianchi/LEIBENSTEIN.50.QJE.pdf
I am the anti-snob... I simply love to expose poseurs by blowing away their $25 Bordeux-style blend with a $10 dollar wine from the Southwest... I do enjoy the great wines, they are expensive for a reason and to be regarded as a treat. I ain't trying to impress anyone by dropping names like Yquem, Opus and DRC...
yes, snobism and vanity are used as marketing tools and for selling techniques.
But still there is a difference between genuine interest and snobism.
when 1 box is found to be empty, you cannot conclude that all boxes everywhere will be empty. the fact that there are snobs in this world and that snobism extists, does not mean at all that all people who are interested in and enjoying something are snobs. you will have to differentiate between authentic and fake and have good arguments.
Given the price differential, esp after taxes, was the competition really comparing like with like?
The only drinkable wine I could find in China - not that I know anything about wine or looked very hard- was from Ningxia. But it was made from gouji berries (aka wolfberries/lycium chinensis) not grapes.
Chinese wine companies regularly mix their wines with imported wines from places like Chile anyway. While I was living in Beijing, some of my Cali wine friends said that Great Wall wine is roughly 40% Chilean, the other 60% being actually made in China. So there's that, too.
And a blind taste test in China? Puh-lease. They probably switched the bottles. Maybe if it were DOUBLE blind... Even then, have you ever known a Chinese stat that was unmanipulated? You can probably short ANY Chinese stock listed in the US for the same sorts of shenanigans as Focus Media. It just takes time to call them all out on it individually.
I lived in France for 10 years and generally bought Sancerre, Pouilly Fume and Chablis (white). I didn't drink much red at the time. I now almost exclusively buy a fantastic Rosé from Neuchâtel (CH). It is an Oeil-de-Perdix (from the Pinot Noir grape) called....I hesitate to name it....... as the Chinese wine buyers will no doubt be taking notes from this thread and I don't want to see it disappear!!
Cheers!!
a good secret should be kept secret.
i heard that some wines tripled in prices because the rising demand from china. wines that were affordable to most people became only affordable for the rich people, because of this.
good wine costs at least 8 euro or 10 dollar to produce (5 euro/liter for aok caskets + labour and other materials).
any wine cheaper than 10 dollars is bad wine. if you spend maybe 15 dollar for a bottel of wine, you can have somthing really really good.
good wine doesn't give any headaches, bad wine does.
advice: austrian and swiss wines can be really good for a modest price.
I also really like wines from Chile but Argentia, Spain, Portugal,
Italy, Austrailia, and even Bulgaria have great reds.
Certain white wines from BC are fantastic and very well priced.
They were only testing them against mid-level French wines, not the really good stuff. Mouton Cadet? Please...
Mid-level?? Try factory wine plonk.... though Mouton is acceptable to serve at 2 AM at a party when everyone is somewhat plastered....
And there you have it. Some knowledge is required when evaluating "news" like this.
Of course the chinese want to promote their own wine regions. Of course they're competing. So this "news" has value. They've discoverd it now (about a decade ago), and LOVE IT.
The politburau probably ordered some villages to start growing grapes, after they compared the soil, and climate.
If the export of France's wines goes to shit, I guess the french will have to drink it themselves. Poor sods. LOL
And as far as the "Reinheitsgebot" goes, in China? Compared to German, Dutch and Belgium beer? We're talking internal consumption, and export, mixed in one chart.
Nah... not buying it. It's competition, sure, and chinese are producing traditional western goods now too, but it's not a "capitulation". Not by a long shot. If you disagree, enjoy your brasillian beer and chinese wine.
Actually i prefer the taste of italian wines myself. Not so easy to get, since the italians consume most themselves.
Proost !
Chile and OzLand produce less expensive and equal quality so why pay more? I have never tasted a chinese red wine. IN fact, it's hard to beat some of those Chilean red wines....
I know someone who used to work for a chemical company and she said the wine industry uses more chemicals than you can imagine. I also just heard they're using natural flavors, such as oak and cherry, (along with the liquor cos.) and not having to put it on the label. Now, I love beer, wine and spirits as much as any lush, but I'm MUCH more selective now. I don't need my brain fried any more than it already is.
Well since I've gotten old my sense of smell and tolerance for acohol is pretty low I only drink a little red wine for cardiovascualr health. In the local supermarket I discovered a delightfull blended red table wine in a 5 liter box. Sometimes I spiff it up by mixing it with diet Dr. Pepper. I mock it but at least it doesn't take the enamel off of my teeth like some of the low cost plonk does.
delightfull blended red table wine in a 5 liter box. Sometimes I spiff it up...
Straight Merlot for me. CA has several boxed merlots, Bronco packages a few.
The blushes you refer are alright to mix around the pool during the summertime, ala "California Cooler" days, especially when our local (No Cal central valley) discount grocers offer 5 liter boxes at frn 6-7 on occasion and usually under frn 10.
Equal amounts of water to wine (separate glasses) seem to prevent the AM lethargy associated with excessive sulfides for me.
Several local wine grape growers, vintners offer juice for home producing that add to "lifestyle" enjoyment for those not too concerned with the snootiness associated with more well known and highly marketed products.
Interesting....So the Chinese can improve upon French plonk....
Wine value is highly dependent on taxes and duties so blanket comparisons are hard to make. I have found that the best values in wine come are to be found in the SW of France, eg. Cahors, Languedoc, Madiran followed closely by Cotes du Rhone.... The generic exports under the Bordeaux appellation tend to be tannic and uninteresting (once again, nuggets exist)....
Once you get to spending $20-$35 a bottle, you should be be getting a high quality bottle regardless of origin. Above that price, everything should be stellar....
Rave all you want about Russian River Pinots, I'll take the Cotes du Nuit anytime....
Most wines that are less than $15 that are not outright bar swill tend to be fruit bombs that have poor structure. This applies to Chilean and Australians...
And just so you know, I have Ch. Montelenas sitting close by to my Ch. Pavie in the cellar....Californians are very good but you pay through the nose.... Lower end stuff is inoffensive plonk...
----
Finest wine I ever had was a 93 Clos St. Denis (Dom. J.P Magnien) about 8 months ago....I bought the bottle at the producer in 1996....
Ah, Clos St. Denis!
Best Burgundy I ever tasted - Thanksgiving, 1976. Haven't found any since.
As to your comments on SW France - had a Cahors with loin of venison last night, have a case and a half of Madiran aging in my cellar and the Doc wines i drank in Toulouse and Carcassone last may were among the best I have ever drunk at the price.
And do not ignore the better mid-range Malbecs from Argentina.
Yes, the Argentine Malbecs... I haven't seen anything good for less than $18 and for that price it is supposed to be good and the question becomes "What do I like in a wine?" Likewise with the Italians...good stuff but few bargains.
If you and your spouse average a couple of cases a month, you really to find value or have deep pockets...
The Musketeers must get busy.
We need a good war.
The Chinese people are slaves, and we should stop supporting slavery.
What a bunch of fucking hypocrites we Westerners are; freedom is good, for our 1% and China's military.
Fucked UP.
Lead improves flavor.
Chinese wine, great is there a website in China I can give my visa number to for over night shipping.
just give the chinese your name...they have already hacked the visa/mastercard servers.
THE wines from australia, new zealand and some argentinian and chilean wines beat low to mid priced similar french wines.
I am not sure what has happened, except it appears france may not have the most suitable climate after all and french low to mid price wines have not been as innovative with technology.
High labor and land costs mean that labor intensive practices and keeping grape production levels low ( improving quality per acre rather than kilos per acre), means that at any price level most other wine growing regions can produce a better wine, input costs being equal.
The french were the last to return to concrete fermentation tanks. French oak is still clearly better than anything else, but in the low to mid price range the rigor and intensity of inputs required to barrel age just arent there in france for example. Also the science of blending and the quality of the tasters is important. Research and innovation is less costly in other areas and french winemakers seem bound by tradition at the low to medium end.
A home winemaker who is extremely careful with cleaning and minimizing oxydation during racking can produce a fantastic wine from crushed frozen grapes at ten bucks a bottle that will compare favorably to 40 dollar and up bottles. TLC and pride of craftsmanship by the amateur will beat an industrial sized organization run by lazy workers. It is not hard to make a small batch of perfect wine.
Glad folk overseas are getting some good Australian wine, all the locals get is crap, even at 35+ its rubbish...have been reduced to drinking cheap imported Bordeaux it at least does taste like wine should and not the heavily wooded local plonk....
Most European wines are environmentally polluted to the extent that it has affected the grape. Try a nice Aussie wine but hard to find called Heartland,
If you can find it you'll enjoy the taste and the cost.
+1 Good idea. According to Heinlein, every survivalist should know how to make alcohol. We don't have the climate to grow grapes, but I've tried my hand at blackberry and strawberry wines which were palatable. The blackberries especially were very good as they have very high sugar content and natural yeast. I might make a still next year to see if I can make fortified blackberry wine, if I don't blow up the garden shed in the process.
I tell the boys that help us in our vineyard and brewery- you are of great value to society when you know how to make brew with your bare hands.
How do they compare to Boones Farm or Night Train?
Crap you beat me to the stupid comment by "that much". I was going to comment that I'd take a couple bottles of Ripple any old day. Thanks for taking the flak. lmao
I watched a slovenly guy rack a hundred barrels once. He used something about the size of a firehose. He let it splash everywhere just like he was filling a water jug. Introducing oxygen during racking will lower the quality of the wine. He didnt seem to know or care. He wasnt a craftsman, just an hourly worker.
so he was the average american worker...?
Meh. Anyone old enough to remember the French putting anti-freeze in their wines? The only surprise here is that the Ningxia turned out to be more expensive than the most expensive Bordeaux. I find Aussie wines (Jacob's Creek) much more palatable and Peruvian wines from the Ica valley divine in comparison to the French crap costing a lot more. I'll probably be panned for this, but most Californian wines taste just as bad as the French.
With the exception of Rothchild Medoc, Chateauneuf du pap, and the stupidly expensive champagnes (demi-sec Krug and Dom P), the rest of the French vatted wines taste more or less like mud laced with methanol. Looking forward to trying the Ningxia, but I don't have high expectations.
Confession Time:
I have never been a wine aficionado. For me, it always overwhelms the taste of my food. Then there is the red stuff which gathers at the corners of your mouth. And it gives me massive headaches the morning after.
Then there is the pretentious wine talk....
"Light currants combined with a beautiful earthy/morning moss-dew fragrance."
WTF?
Not me.
If I have wine around, it is on the boat, and it's Mylar bag has been removed from the box so I can toss it into some odd cabinet or in the bilge where it conforms to the shape. You can connect a number of these bags to a messenger line on your mast to increase your radar signature.
For casual drinking, give me a few fingers of JD or Makers over a single ice cube, perhaps a small bowl of roasted, salted almonds to nibble on.
For dinner, water is just fine, thank you.
Let me recommend Wild Turkey Rare Breed. That is genuine sipping whiskey. Pussies mix it with water.
I drink wine to go with the food. If we're confessing, it's really the alcohol and it's sybaritic effects that I'm after. If it goes well with the food, and lessens the after effects of drinking then it's a bonus that's always much appreciated.
You forgot the "hint of chocolate and fig with overtones of Frangipani...I'm with you WTF...
Re radar signature.....sorry chum thats a phurphy...due to the rounded shape the best you will get is a reflection about the width of a pencil line and probably vertical at tha, and marine radar is horizontly polarised, which means the radar won't see it....you need right angle corners for best radar cross section. Please do not rely on wine bladders your safety is on the line. Good Saiing....
Agreed but it was Austrian wines that were laced with antifreeze. So says the Wiki at least.
It's funny how things get changed. I don't remember the Austrian scandal at all - it was mostly the French getting a pounding by the press a few years back. I think the anti-freeze was even mentioned in an episode of the Simpsons when Bart went to France to work at a vineyard.
You're right, I came across that when trying to find info about the antifreeze deal. Supposedly it was ranked as the #1 Simpsons episode. I wonder if a great deal of influence was exerted to keep the French wine industry from being sullied?
French, also. I remember....
Major scandal - Burgundy, I believe.
I agree with you about california wines, but low end california wines generally are superior to low end french wines.
Charles Shaw aka Two Buck Chuck
The St. Emilion in the taste test will not be ready to drink for many more years, plus 2009 was supposed to be a bad vintage year. The Medoc has a long cellar time too. Most French Bordeaux's are horribly tannic when tasted young. I don't know anything about the Chinese wines, but if they are ready to drink now, they would be expected to taste better than the French wines that still require aging.