France is on the brink of a step that may end a quarter-century of decline in its wine industry. The notoriously stubborn French producers have been spurred by some dreadful statistics in a study commissioned by Vinexpo, the French-run international wine show. These include the fact that by 2010 their countrymen will be drinking less wine overall than America, and in consumption per head are due to be overtaken by the Italians. Jean-Marie Chadronnier, a Bordeaux wine-maker and president of Vinexpo, said in February that the French are now drinking half as much wine as they did 50 years ago. And France is getting still worse at selling its wine both at home and abroad.
Although wine consumption continues to grow worldwide—with China and Russia now in the top ten—the French have in recent years struggled to export it. They lost the position of number one exporter in the world to Italy in the mid-1980s, and now have Australia—which expects to have 10 per cent of the world's export market by 2010—barking at their heels.
France's ministry of agriculture has long been pushing this expensive, over-producing industry to sort out its marketing and the unwieldy wine classification system. The two issues are, of course, related. Under intense pressure from the agriculture minister, Dominique Bussereau, the industry is likely this spring to agree a new wine classification to join the existing three, which date from the 1930s: vin de table (or basic), vin de pays (identified by region), and the appellation controllée (AOC) labelling that distinguishes higher quality wines according to their terroir, or place of origin. Producers last year rejected the ministry's attempts to divide the all-but-useless AOC classification into an elite and an ordinary bracket. But the new "Vignobles de France" classification looks like gaining enough supporters to be accepted.
The reality of mass wine marketing, which the French have long refused to address, is that the typical bottle sold in Britain today costs £3 or £4, is between 12.5 and 13 per cent alcohol and is clearly labelled according to grape variety: pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc and so on. Much the same is true in the US, the world's fastest-growing import market. Vignobles de France would establish a national French brand allowing wine-makers to blend vin de pays from different regions and label it according to grape variety. The great bulk of consumers in Britain and the US have no interest in the fact that M Chadronnier's own, quite ordinary, claret is bottled at its château, Marsau, under the appellation "Côtes de Francs." What may count more is that it's a merlot and that it's from Bordeaux, France.
Some exporters to the US have already begun to take the necessary liberties with the produce of the prized terroirs. I found a six-foot pyramid of red wine bottles dominating an aisle in a Texas supermarket in January. On the label was a laughing hippopotamus and the words "Thierry and Guy's Fat Bastard Shiraz." It was selling well. In very small print on the reverse it said "Vin de Pays d'Oc."
Oysters in New Orleans
The food of New Orleans, natives tell you, is the only high cuisine that North America can genuinely call its own: a unique form brought about through harnessing the fish and vegetables of the bayous and the Gulf of Mexico to the desires of migrants from France, Spain, the Caribbean and Africa. Now is a good time to go to New Orleans and debate this contentious claim: the French quarter—unlike much of the city—has largely scrubbed away the traces of Katrina's floods, the conventioneers and tourists haven't yet returned, and the cheap dollar is a gift to the greedy. In January I wandered, bloated, from one high-ceiling, venerable creole restaurant to another pondering two questions: why we in Europe so rarely cook our oysters (no one seems to make steak and oyster pie any more), and what the best way to make Oysters Rockefeller is.
Does anyone know the answer to the first? The second, after painstaking research, I have resolved. It's as they do them at Galatoire's on Bourbon Street, the city's second oldest restaurant. The dish—and is there anything better to do with an oyster than to swallow it?—was first made in 1899 at New Orleans's oldest restaurant of all, Antoine's, and was named after the oil billionaire John D Rockefeller. But Antoine's is not quite what it was a century ago. This column doesn't usually do recipes, but Oysters Rockefeller is ridiculously easy, given the sublime joy it brings, and no British cookbook that I know of mentions it. So: you puree some spinach and melted butter, along with a modicum of chopped leek, fennel, shallot, parsley and celery, season the mix with thyme, cayenne, ketchup or tomato purée, Worcester sauce and, crucially, a generous splash of pastis, either the Louisianan Herbsaint or Pernod. Spoon this over your half-shelled oyster and bake till the surface just bubbles. And no more. (The precise recipe is here.)
