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!

1. Grace Vineyard Chairman’s Reserve 2009
2. Silver Heights The Summit 2009
3. Helan Qing Xue Jia Bei Lan Cabernet Dry Red 2009
4. Grace Vineyard Deep Blue 2009
5. 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.

Comments

[4horse]

freedom fries and cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys, France is seen as europe's most antisemitic state
                               until his election
                             http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cusf/analysis/chebel.pdf

_{ney and delay
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2842493.stm}

_{. . . delayed
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Members_of_Congress_under_investigation}

yet jacques chirac . . .
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/12/15/uk-france-chirac-verdict-idUKTRE7BE0LP20111215

iraq chirac payback
http://www.economist.com/node/1633583

diktat: punish your enemies/reward your friends,-of-israel

never forgive. never forget, the pettiest of conflicts
                                                                        until they know not to fuck with you
                                                 never again.
                                                                   unless . . . squalor sweatshops sexslaves, and A Paradise of Profits

abramoff delayed                                                               Strange Savings
http://www.campaignmoney.org/blog/2005/04/29/northern-mariana-islands-abramoff-delay-and-enron

[laosuwan]

and how, exactly, would a jew benefit from that? you are half right. the french and the eu created the plan called eurabia to become a muslim vassal state in order to balance the power of the usa. its been a good ride for the leftist politicians who have stayed in power from the voting block of these immigrants but that will come to an end, too. remember, the palestinians and arabs were allied with the nazis against the jews. no jews are importing muslims, that's an eu atheist leftist one world thing not a jewish thing.

[nmewn]

But how is their wine?

[4horse]

http://johntalbottsparis.typepad.com/john_talbotts_paris/2011/09/a-word-on-wine-on-wednesday-fucksrkozycom.html