Salut/Hi Midlife,

le/on Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:47:56 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

>in article , Ian Hoare at
wrote on 9/21/04 6:32 AM:

>Thank you Ian. All the responses have been appreciated with yours and Dale's
>being two that I've printed out and will keep. It's not that I haven't been
>exposed to all this before.... I have. I've just never made a real effort
>to absorb it and remember it.

Well, the secret to learning about ANY wine from anywhere is to make some
effort of memory. I know that with the manifold other calls on time and
effort some of them seem less worth while, but as you rightly say, France is
one of the the largest wine producing nations and despite the stupidities of
which it is capable, you CAN find some of the most exciting wines in the
world from there. Its wines repay the effort - generously. Not least because
it IS hard to know in advance what pretensions a wine has, and impossible to
know whether it has succeeded. So unless you KNOW, it is hard to work out
whether a bottle of 1994 Gevrey-Chambertin from Jean-Claude Boisset is going
to be as good as, better than or less good than a bottle of 1995
Charmes-Chambertin from Armand Rousseau.

(For your information, Gevrey-chambertin is the name of the village, and as
a village wine, it is unlikely to be at the top end of the range. Boisset is
one of the largest negociants in the business, and has a mediocre reputation
for his bottom end wines. !994 was a fair year. Charmes-Chambertin is a
Grand Cru vineyard, (right at the very top of the tree) Armand Rousseau is a
winemaker of well justified stellar reputation and 1995 was a great
vintage.)

>and also owns a small company that does wine education. The conclusion re
>my block on this was that I really need to drink more French wine and pay
>attention to the labels while I'm doing it.

ABSOLUTELY. Never pass up the chance to taste. And have a little notebook in
which you write down the name of the wine, the maker (if you can) the year,
the price, who imports it and what you think of it.

>Thanks again.

You're very welcome.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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