Business journalist
Winemaker Maxime Chapoutier would be arrested if he tried to sell two of his latest wines in his native France.
“There would probably be a rage in France for these wines, and that would be a good thing,” he says. “Sometimes you have to be provocative to initiate change.”
The two bottles in question, one white and one red, would be illegal in France because they are made from a blend of French and Australian base wines.
According to French and European Union law, it is forbidden to make wine that combines EU and non-EU fruit. Especially in France, the authorities take such things very seriously.
The French wine industry has a celebrated word called “Terroir”, which refers to all the environmental factors that affect the vines in the vineyard, such as soil, climate and altitude. As a result, wines from a particular place are held in the highest regard.
Add in the strict appellation or classification system for French wine regions, and the thought of mixing French and Australian wine to create a global hybrid would terrify many French wine lovers.
Yet Maxime has done just that, and it’s all thanks to one word – Brexit.
Because while he can’t sell two wines in the EU, he can do so in the UK now that London no longer has to follow food and drink rules set by Brussels.
Maxime created the wines in partnership with UK online retailer The Wine Society, where they are called Hemispheres Red and Hemispheres White. The red is made from Syrah grapes, or Shiraz as they are called in Australia, while the white is a blend of Marsanne and Viognier varieties.
Australian red and white wine components are shipped largely to the UK, where they are blended with wine from France’s Northern Rhone and Roussillon regions before bottling.
Maxime, who works for a celebrated Rhone-based wine company, says that while he respects France’s focus on terroir, there should be room for global blends as well.
“CHAPOUTIER has been making wine for over 200 years, very terroir driven and biodynamic,” he says. “But more and more people are turning their backs on French wines because they don’t understand the complex rules of the appellation.
“We have to adapt to consumers and make wines more affordable, which international blends can help. Maybe the EU law will change. It’s also ecological to ship wine from Australia to Europe, because you don’t have the weight of all the glass bottles.”
Another wine company that is now making wines by combining grapes from two continents is the Australian company Penfolds. It sells reds made from Australian and Californian grapes, and others that mix Australian and French grapes. Again, they cannot be sold in the EU, but they can be sold in the UK, USA, Australia and elsewhere.
Penfolds calls these blends “the wine of the world” and says they “possess an otherness that can best be described as otherworldly.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Not surprisingly, some traditional winemakers are not in favor of this development. One such person is Jas Swan, an independent winemaker based in Germany.
While the blends from two continents are carefully sourced from quality grapes, and priced accordingly, she fears that if the trend grows, it will mean much cheaper, lower-quality wine on sale.
“I believe that those types of wines would have nothing left of any terroir, even before they left their continent,” she says. “Those wines would have seen only machine work, heavy additives to keep them pure and produced as if they were easy to drink for the masses.
“Why can’t consumers be more demanding? Consumerism is crazy.”
Peter Richards, who holds the global wine industry’s top qualification, the Master of Wine (MW), is also a sniffer. “The notion of blending for wine for wine is not something that I found inherently amazing,” he says. “My concern is more that it’s about creating novelty for novelty’s sake.”
His wife, Susie Barrie, who is also MW, adds: “I still believe that wine made by blending grapes from different countries can be great in terms of taste.”
Conversely, wine writer Jamie Goode says developing wines from two continents is “actually quite a fun idea”.
“If the wines are good and well made from good vineyard sites – not just a gimmick that mixes together cheap bulk wines and then slaps a huge markup on the wine – then this is pretty interesting.
“The fundamental basis for fine wine is the concept of Terroir – that wines come from a place, and their taste expresses this place in unique ways. But not all wines have to be terroir wines, and there is a place for such wines.
“In a way, it takes a lot of skill to bring the right wines together to create something interesting that comes from such different places.”
Pierre Mansour, head of buying for the wine company, says he and his colleagues came up with the idea of creating two wines made from grapes from different continents as part of the company’s 150th birthday celebrations.
“We were thinking about the future of wine and we wanted to do something innovative. We ended up thinking that one area of innovation was blending, creating wine that can mitigate the impact of climate change on a particular country.
“And from the carbon footprint out of sight, it’s more environmentally friendly to ship wine from Australia to the UK. But at the same time we expected the ‘terrorists’ to say ‘stick to it’ is basically against the French director of wine’.
“We got so close to the captain, thinking they might say, ‘Are you angry, how dare you offend’, but they were brilliant. They were really delighted.”
