French winemakers struggle to survive

SAUMUR, France — As the wine harvest kicks into full swing here, big gears are slowly beginning to turn in an industry thrown into crisis mode.

For hundreds of years, France was the world's indisputable reference for wine quality. Various regions eventually name-protected their wines through what's called an AOC — short form for Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée — which gave them both a marketing edge and became something of a Good Housekeeping Seal for the customer.

Now, however, something's gotta give. Many other countries are making wines that easily compete on the world market in terms of quality and volume, and at home, wine is losing ground to beer and other drinks. Winemakers here have been quick to point out the problems, but have done little to react.

The French wine-classification system is the first place to look for what's gone wrong.

The AOCs should be a guarantee of quality — a unique expression of the winemakers' abilities, the grapes they use, the soil, their skills in the field and the aging process (all of this is wrapped into the vague but romantic notion of "terroir").

When it works, AOC or not, you get that unique expression — something far less homogeneous than the generic products that often predominate on American liquor-store shelves.

However, the French wine-classification system has evolved into a complicated 11-level liquid pyramid with table wines at the bottom and AOCs at the top. In theory, the volume of the wine produced would go down and the quality would go up as you worked your way to the top, but the AOCs alone now account for more than 50 percent of wine production and can represent both the best and worst of wine.

With the 11 levels and hundreds of individual AOCs, even the best wine snobs have trouble figuring out which end is up. Confronted with the choice between an Australian shiraz and an obscure AOC such as Pecharmant, what's a hurried U.S. shopper going to choose?

Though some producers persist in having the wine from their lost corner of the country turned into an AOC, the most common idea circulating through the French wine community is simplification.

Imagine how much easier choosing a wine would be if the label said something you could interpret as "good," "better" or "best."

Another idea is to consistently use some of the space on the back of the bottle to give the client some idea of what the wine will taste like and what it goes well with. Cheaper wines could even get away with little pictograms.

Ideas like these are particularly important for the export market. Most AOCs are blends of different kinds of grapes. Most Champagne, for instance, is a blend of pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay grapes, with a couple of others thrown in for good measure. Outside Europe, however, most wines are monovarietals, made up of only one kind of grape. Syrahs are made by producers around the world, and there's plenty of variety within that group. Burgundies, however, can come only from Burgundy.

In the Loire Valley, producers are taking action. As export director for Alliance Loire, a group of nine Loire Valley cooperative producers that represent some 800 winemakers, Claude Guichet understands the importance of small producers working together in order to survive in the long run.

"These winemakers want to be around in 10 or 20 years," he says. "People who don't adapt won't make it."

Alliance Loire's efforts are easiest to see with entry-level wines called "Vallée Loire" — a sort of umbrella label for regional wines made by Alliance Loire's group of producers.

"We're trying to keep the client from getting lost," says Elodie Rume, who coordinates Alliance Loire's marketing efforts, as Guichet displays a photo of five styles of regional wine, all under an additional black-and-white label that simply says "Vallée Loire."

It's an idea that allows for variety, yet also helps different products stick out on a supermarket shelf. Customers might not know AOCs like a Bourgueil or Saumur, but they'll be able to recognize the Loire Valley's name above it all.

Alliance Loire, now four years old, is setting up similar structures for both higher- and lower-quality wines and, for very basic wines, even toying with heretical-in-France ideas like screw-top caps, boxed wines and Tetra-Pak presentations.

Alliance Loire's efforts are paying off, allowing it to export what Guichet estimates to be around 15,000 cases per year — a number he's predicting to rise to 40,000 five years from now.

"We've had success every year since we've started," he said. "Every year it goes up."