Although all wine business eyes are currently glued to the Robert Mondavi Winery soap opera, really, it’s not the biggest wine story. But first let’s get the latest chapter of the Mondavi saga out of the way.

At last look Constellation Brands – a publicly traded New York company previously known as Canandaigua Wines – dropped by the house with a sweep-it-off-its-feet $1.3 billion cash offer.

So far, Constellation is the only suitor pledging any kind of troth. Mondavi’s board is batting its eyelashes, pretending that it has no intention of rushing off with anyone. Shareholders, who are looking at a 33% spurt in the value of their shares, may be a bit more starry-eyed, however. This man’s guess: Mondavi is holding out for a bigger dowry – probably from the same suitor – but will go down the aisle all the same.

It’s an interesting divertissement, but really, the biggest wine business story is France. You see, France is in wine meltdown. Consider this:

Wine imports to America increased by 28% in just four years:

2002 – 67.7 million cases of wine
1999 – 48.5 million cases of wine

Now look at where the wines come from – according to the Wine Institute, a longtime trade organization based in San Francisco:

2002

Italy – 37% (22.1 million cases)
France – 18% (12.48 million cases)
Australia – 18% (12.44 million cases)

1999

Italy – 32% (16.8 million cases)
France – 24% (12.4 million cases)
Australia – 11.6% (4.5 million cases)

Clearly, Australia is the big winner, with a 176% increase in imports to the United States in just four years. But France, in comparison, effectively declined by remaining stagnant while the import market grew by 28%.

Keep in mind that this longer view almost eliminates any effect of anti-French prejudice from the Iraq War dispute. France has been sliding down the slippery slope for years.

And that’s just imports to the United States. It’s no different anywhere else, including within France itself. For example, the winery price of everyday Bordeaux has plunged by half in the last three years. The French aren’t drinking it and neither is anyone else.

The Brits, for example, don’t want their once-beloved claret, their term for red Bordeaux, anywhere near as much as they once did. Here’s how bad it’s become: For the first time, no French wine is among Britain’s 10 bestselling wines. They’re all Australian, American, or Italian.

Inside France itself, wine consumption continues its decades-long downward spiral. Consumption today is roughly half of what it was in the 1960s. And no one disputes that this decline will continue.

What’s more, France – the country of wine romance par excellence – is actually engaged in a bitter internecine spat. One part of the French body politic is obsessed, a l’America, with health. In 1991 France passed what is known as the “Evin Law,” which bans alcohol advertising on television and at sporting events, and severely limits advertising in print. (It also regulates tobacco advertising.) French wine producers have been muzzled.

This month, the French National Assembly voted to amend the law. Now, for the first time, French winegrowers can actually make qualitative claims such as “Mon vin est bon.” The amendment declares “For produce with an appellation or geographical indication, advertising can contain references to the qualitative characteristics of the product.”

The amendment now goes to the French Senate where, if approved, it will become law. France’s minister of social affairs, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said he did not support the amendment.

Does this sound like a wine country able to take on the world? Hardly. France can’t even effectively sell wine to itself, never mind anyone else.

If someone told you even 10 years ago that the world’s greatest wine nation – the folks who invented wine romance; who convinced people to pour Champagne over winners’ heads and break bottles across ship’s prows; who made a worldwide event (and a fortune) from the release of a weeks-old little red wine called Beaujolais Nouveau; and, above all, who gave the world benchmark bottlings of almost great grape variety – was being beaten by a bunch of Aussies, Yanks, and Italians you’d be incredulous. “C’est ne pas possible!” you’d have declared in your best high school French.

But it’s so. The long-term decline of French wine sales is the most astounding event in modern wine history. And unlike the Mondavi decline, the fall of France isn’t just a family affair. It involves the (business) fate of nations.

HERE’S THE DEAL

VERO CHARDONNAY “BOURGOGNE” 2002 JOSEPH DROUHIN

Can France come back? This white wine, from the venerable Burgundy shipping house Joseph Drouhin, shows that France can indeed compete – if it wishes.

Burgundy has always been a rat’s nest for wine buyers. Vineyard holdings are divided into parcels as small as one-tenth of an acre. It’s the realm of smallholders, many of whom make their own wine. Some are dazzlingly great, while others trade on a legal right to famous district names such as Chambertin or Meursault but deliver third-rate wines from over cropped vines.

Shippers, by the way, can be even more venal. The French government is currently prosecuting the famous Burgundy shipper Chanson Pere et Fils for making and selling fraudulent Burgundies. Red wine from southwest France was added to Burgundy’s native pinot noir. Also wines from lesser Burgundy districts were labeled as coming from other, more lucrative districts. Both are old shipper tricks.

(An interesting twist in this case: The former owners of Chanson, brothers Francois and Philippe Marion, have already pled guilty, as has their cellar master, Marc Cugney. So there’s no question about the misdeeds. But the prosecutor is also charging the new owner of Chanson, the French Champagne house Bollinger, which bought it in 1999, with complicity in the crime, alleging that former Chanson CEO Etienne Bizot – whose family owns Bollinger – knowingly sold the fraudulent wine. M. Bizot says he is innocent.)

Anyway, Joseph Drouhin has no such blots on its copybook. But it does share the same structural problem as everyone else in Burgundy, namely, how to create a commercial-size quantity of really good wine in a place where tiny ownerships and equally tiny districts abound.

Their answer is a proprietary name called Vero, named after winemaker Veronique Drouhin. The idea is not new. Rather, it’s the execution that matters. It’s all about standards, which means, how good are the grapes going into the blend? The answer, at least for this inaugural 2002 chardonnay bottling, is: mighty fine indeed.

The 2002 vintage was exceptionally good for white Burgundy (chardonnay). Collectively, it was a ripe, lush vintage. That’s exactly what the 2002 Vero chardonnay is: honeyed, intense, rich, succulent, and laced with the sort of mineral/stony scent and taste that sets apart chardonnay grown in Burgundy from almost anywhere else. (Drouhin reports that the wine is a blend of Chablis, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, and Rully.) There’s only the barest, appetizing touch of oak. It’s certainly a white wine to drink now, the better to enjoy its lush ripeness.

France could do a lot of this delectable sort of thing – if it wanted. Let’s hope this is a taste of things to come. $18.