THERE are three bottles of Unfinished wine on my kitchen counter. And if they are unfinished, what does that mean? Either that I am a master of self control, or they're French. Which explanation do you think is correct? If you opt for number one, you're a cretin, and can I borrow a couple of grand? If you opt for number two, it probably means that you, like me, are tired of buying third rate French wines which end up in the gravy.
This is uneconomical, but it is better than doing the only other thing you can do with the plonque, which is to pour it down the drain. I'd leave it out for the slugs and snails, only they are far too fastidious, and leave haughty trails of slime as they head off towards something more delicious.
Writing this pains me. I love France, and I love good French wines, and I love Sopexa, which promotes Food from France most of all, I love Dominique Geary and Jacinta Delahaye, whose promotion of French foods and wines through Sopexa has not merely widened Irish tastes enormously but has also encouraged the development of similar food products in Ireland.
Civilisation And Culture
Trade is one of the wonderful human inventions. It civilises and opens us up to the civilisation and the culture of other people. The essence of trade is the buyer's belief that his money is buying reliable quality, to be repeated on each fresh deal at a fair price. And that essence is nowadays too often missing when I buy French wine.
Like many people, I spend between £5 to £6 on a normal bottle of everyday wine. For that money, I normally know what I am getting from most countries, and not just from the new world whose wines are rightly trumpeted. Once I get to the £5 threshold, I can also be sure that wines from Romania and Bulgaria will be drinking now, with loads of character, a bit of structure, a good nose, and a complex flavour.
But I do not have to go outside the EU for this Italian, wines are a little expensive, but "many Iberian wines are extremely good value: the Don Carlos range of wines offer superb value for money, and at an extremely competitive variety of prices.
Moderate Prices
The point is, with those wines at moderate prices I know what I am getting. Not with French wines - and not just at the £5 or £6 mark. I can buy a claret or a burgundy for £8 or £9 and the chances are it will taste like stewed tea mixed with industrial alcohol and an infusion of sad and sorry grapes, the identity of which, or the blend, I know nothing - for French winemakers assume that we do not need to know these things. And they assume it because they have been allowed to assume it. We still buy their dreary, listless wines, and they no doubt think we are celebrating French culture.
Wrong. Wine might very well be part of French culture, and be both the adhesive of the French agricultural economy, and its creation - certainly, when one visits French vineyards one always feels that something profoundly important to the producers is involved, something beyond our understanding. A god we do not know is being worshipped; and if the wine produced in the course of this worship is good, good and if not, not good. There is nothing more to say.
Viticulture Mystique
But there it is if seems, if you are French. Vineyards all over France produce a vast lake of thin, tanniny grapejuice which they bottle and label inscrutably, incomprehensibly and almost identically, and then sell to us. And why do we buy it? Why do supermarkets continue to stock their shelves with scores of French wines whose names I can't remember, which look identical, are completely without character and whose only proper destiny is to make gravy or the dog drunk?
Now I really hate saying this; but here goes. The promotion of French wines is still governed by the mystique of France, and the mystique of viticulture, not by ordinary commercial rules of quality and price. Those involved in that promotion, and those captivated by the ethos of French viticulture, normally assume a popular knowledge which simply isn't there - for example, wine guides invariably list French wines not in some index to which you can instantly refer, but under the region from which the wines come.
Sorry. Most Irish people do not know whether Chateauneuf du Pape comes from Burgundy, Bordeaux, Loire or the Vatican, and more to the point, do not care. Equally, the promotion of French wine in Ireland has depended on the granting to Irish sommeliers the right to wear funny hats and gowns and to call themselves by grandly; named titles such as maitre del vin this or grand chevalier de vin that, as if some magic part of French culture is thus magically transmitted to Ireland.
Wrong again. The standards' of Irish sommeliers in the Sopexa contest last year - announced with huge pomp and even huger speeches over a very expensive and classically statist dinner at the Shelbourne last year - were extremely poor. We are still learning about wines - but maybe at least we are beginning to learn that a wine should not be chosen for the country it comes from, or because of any cultural associations it brings to our tables, but for two things only - value for money and reliability.
Everyone else - the Spanish, the Romanians, the Downunders and the Chileans appear to understand this. Not the French. Fine. So let's teach them a lesson. Since I am no longer prepared even to try and remember one indistinguishable chateau label from another, when there are 20 or 30 alongside one another on the supermarket shelves, I simply will not buy, French wine any more, not unless I know the wine is extremely good indeed, or I have beside me one of Alex Findlater's excellent wine experts like David Miller.
For it is surely time to tell the winemakers of France the rules from now on are as we make them. And these are the rules - a reliable and recognisable product, please, with an intelligent label which explains things in English, at a right price. Otherwise, no sale.