Say ‘Bonjour’ To the Free Market

“How has France, the carefree country of joie-de-vivre, come to this?” plaintively asked Denis Saverot, the editor in chief of France’s most important wine magazine, La Revue du vin de France.In a recent column in these pages, I wrote about how a French court ruled that a newspaper article that recommended French Champagnes was “intended to promote sales of alcoholic beverages in exercising a psychological effect on the reader that incited him or her to buy alcohol.” As a result, it could be construed as alcohol advertising — restricted under France’s Évin law, which bans this kind of advertising on television and at sporting events, and limits it in print publications. More recently, on February 13, a French appeals court sustained a ruling instructing the Heineken beer company to remove all advertising from its French Web site. These rulings will have a chilling effect not merely on beer advertising, but on all Web sites where articles about wine, beer, or spirits are presented.In a guest column that will appear in the March issue of the British wine magazine, Decanter, titled “A Cruel Paradox,” Mr. Saverot, who made his article available exclusively to The New York Sun, describes the decision as “shocking,” and contends that because France is now essentially “impotent” in military and diplomatic matters, “our members of parliament and civil servants have only one route left: to interfere in the private lives of the population.”Mr. Saverot fingers the pharmaceutical industry as an éminence grise, financing the organizations that actively litigate to enforce the Évin law as a stalking horse for their interests, which see wine as competition.The key to the “incredible blindness of the French wine industry” is that “French wine, outside of Champagne, does not have any powerful companies. In our country, 50% of the producers are still families,” he wrote.Mr. Saverot goes further yet: “Had we allowed wine advertising on TV, no producer or négociant could afford a slot on prime-time. Thus with an ulterior motive of protectionism, to halt any offensive by Gallo, Mondavi or Constellation on the home market and block the arrival of foreign wines, French winemakers and négociants allowed the Évin law in. Now they find themselves caught in a trap.”The real trap the French now find themselves in is an erosion of liberté in a nation that has prided itself on this very attribute. Long suspicious of the free market, France has frothed itself into an proto-Prohibitionist frenzy where the free market now looks mighty attractive.HERE’S THE (FREE MARKET) DEALChâteau Haut-Rian “Bordeaux Sec” 2006 — Jazz great Dizzy Gillespie put it best: “The professional is the guy that can do it twice.”The guy in this case is Michel Dietrich, the owner-winemaker of Château Haut-Rian, who makes a dry white wine in an obscure area of Bordeaux that rocks for the money. He’s a pro, never mind France’s inhospitable legal climate for wine promotion.This brand-new 2006 rendition of Château Haut-Rian is as good as Mr. Dietrich has ever offered. With a succulent, lime-scented fruitiness from a blend of sémillon from half-century old vines (65%) and sauvignon blanc (35%), it’s enlivened by an exceptional balance courtesy of ideal acidity. At $8.49 at Chambers Street Wines (160 Chambers St., between West Broadway and Greenwich Street, 212-227-1434), this is a dry white wine that is as good a value as anything I’ve tasted on the market today.Cycles Gladiator Syrah “Central Coast” 2006 — Wine writers, like horseplayers, take pride in spotting new up-and-comers. This writer is no exception. When the California Cycles Gladiator label first appeared in 2006, it looked like yet another brand-name bottling. Most of these brand-name bottles are dreary and interchangeable, trading on cutesy names and, typically, labels sporting equally cute animals. The trade quickly christened them “critter wines.”So I was more than a little surprised upon tasting the Cycles Gladiator reds to discover that these were genuinely different. Indeed, they were high-quality steals for the (little) money.Two years ago, I commended both the 2004 Cycles Gladiator merlot and syrah to Sun readers, cautioning that “New wine brands such as this often start with exemplary quality. But as demand increases and producers reach beyond the backbone of their own holdings, quality often declines. So what’s true for these first-ever Cycles Gladiator reds from the 2004 vintage may not be true a few vintages from now.”I was wrong — at least two vintages later, anyway. The just-released 2006 Cycles Gladiator syrah is every bit as good as the inaugural 2004 vintage — and the price hasn’t changed by a penny.This is no small achievement, as this 2006 syrah is not merely a good red wine experience, but a genuinely fine, genuinely syrah experience. It smells like syrah, with whiffs of white pepper and blueberry notes that characterize cool-climate syrah. (Warm-climate syrah is more a matter of black pepper and leather notes.) The color is a deep, bright, blackish garnet and the fruit intensity is suitably intensive, but buoyed by a just-right, refreshing acidity.All this goodness is all the more appealing when you see the price: $9.99 a bottle, tops. Some merchants lower that to $8.99 and at least one, Cabrini Wines and Liquors (831 W. 181st St. at Cabrini Boulevard, 212-568-3226), has it for $7.99.

Say ‘Bonjour’ To the Free Market

Say ‘Bonjour’ To the Free Market

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