French Wine 101
 

Bonjour! I am a California girl, primarily familiar with California wines. I am off to Paris at the end of the month, and in anticipation, am interested in learning about french wines. My hope is to learn enough before I go so that I may intelligently choose wine, rather than choosing by price. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good book that might do the trick? All suggestions welcome. Thank you.

The classic book on French wines is Frederick Wildman's "A Wine Tour of France;" I don't know whether it's still in print, but you might be able to find a used copy if not. The book is actually a series of articles, region by region, that ran in Gourmet magazine way back when, revised for publication in one volume. It's a wonderful book; Wildman has a very readable prose style.

Another good book is "The Wine Roads of Europe," by Marc and Kim Millon. Alexis Lichine also writes on French wines.

Merci beaucoup, Underhill.

When I worked at an upscale restaurant nearly 10 years ago, the manager recommended the Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, which I bought and to which I still occasionally refer.

There is a 2004 version, which is well-reviewed on Amazon.com.

NB: this is general wine course which includes good info about French wines, along with those from California, Oregon, Italy, and other parts of the world. In other words, its focus is not soley on France.

There is a "French Wine for Dummies," which I've not yet seen, but which is very well-reviewed on Amazon.com

Both Kermit Lynch and Charlie Trotter wrote blurbs for the back cover.

Thanks, Lesli. I'll have a look.

My local wine store has tastings(free) every weekend. Maybe you could find some in your area.

Kermit Lynch's "Adventures on the Wine Route" is extremely informative and a good read. Robert Joseph's "French Wines" (DK Publishing) offers a great overview.

For touring specific regions, the series edited by Hugh Johnson "Touring in the Wine Country" is good.

And "Wine and War," while certainly not a wine text, provides interesting context.

The wine bible, however, is not even French. It is Amerine & Singleton's "Introduction to Wine", published by the University of California at Davis. This may be more in-depth than you'd need and it can get a little technical, but you'd learn a lot that would be applicable to French wines.

You might want to go to one of the Saturday afternoon tastings at La Derniere Goutte, an interesting wine shop in the 6eme that sells exceptional and reasonable wines from some of the lesser-known appellations (and then you can pick up some interesting bottles to bring back!).

The best suggestion is to go to wine tastings and know what you prefer and to learn why one is for dessert and not for the main meal. Recently on one of the tv shows like 60 min. or dateline, they had a cooking school class blind test wines, from two buck chuck to a fifty dollar wine. Amazingly half the class liked the charles Shaw wine. A wine that I think is terrible, but hey, when I was young, I thought blue nun was great.

When you're young, Blue Nun IS great. At that age, it's the alcohol that counts, not the nuances or complexity.

These are great suggestions! This will be my second trip to Paris, and I have 8 full days to leisurely "drink it in." A few hours wine tasting will be an afternoon well spent!

Elle, I will definately take down the name of the wine shop you recommended. Is it well known? I am staying in the 6th eme, so do you think my hotel could direct me there? I guess I could always look it up on Pages jaunes, a new site I learned about here!

Thanks again.

Elle, I did look up the wine shop you recommended and got its address and phone number. (How cool is that?!?!) Do you think I need a reservation? Thanks in advance.

Cigalechanta - We actually saw blue nuns in Rome this summer!! They had bright blue habits and we wondered if the wine was somehow connected to them.

I hope you took a photo?
Kybourbon, are your photos posted somewhere? What was your favorite wine in Rome? I'm open to trying something new to me.

I believe the Amerine and Singleton book was actually published by the Univ. of California Press, which published most if not all of Amerine's other books. The legendary Maynard Amerine was the great wine expert at UC Davis and was one of the principal advisors to the early Napa Valley winemakers, along with Herman Jan Phaff, a world-renowned yeast expert.

Irego,

Don't forget all those wine bars in Paris. Please have several Burgundies and a good Chablis for me!

Iregeo- Hands down, the BEST wine book for beginners is Great Wine Made Simple by Andrew Immer. It is unlike all the other wine books that bog beginners down with memorizing huge amounts of technical jargon and information that they don't really need to learn about wine. She walks you through the most important and common grapes and teaches you how to tell the difference. She then takes you to each of the major wine growing regions (including 2 chapters on France where she even explains the labels) and breaks down the confusion that most Americans face with French wine. With a couple of hours and this book, you will know more than 90% of people out there. Trust me, I'm sure those other books are good to, but if you are a wine novice there is no other choice than this book - it will then allow you to understand more complex books. You can find it at Amazon or Borders, etc.

Having a good wine shop can help, but especially in Paris, they will ask you what you are looking for and having some of the basics down can help. I'm currently obtaining an Intermediate Certificate in Wine from the Wine And Spirits Education Trust and I frequently travel to Paris. If you want a few starter tips on understanding French wine, I'd be happy to give them to you on this board... let me know.

correction: i meant Andrea Immer, not Andrew

Underhill, it will be my pleasure!

Medeterraneo, I would love any information you can provide. I am primarily a red wine drinker. I particularly enjoy bold reds: cabernets, merlots, syrahs, sangiovese.

Looking forward to your tips!

FRENCH WINE: THE BASICS
ok, i'll do this in a couple of posts to make it easier to follow and then if there is an area you want more info on, let me know (i'm leaving for Brazil tomorrow so it might be a while before I can respond again).

I will focus a bit more on reds since that is your preference (i think a cultural bias against white wine has developed, at least in my generation) but France has some amazing white wines as well that you should at least try.

REGION NOT VARIETAL
The most important thing to know (which you probably do already) is that, unlike in CA where it's easy to buy wine because it is listed by grape, in France wine is labeled (and ordered) by Appellation (geographic region) and the vinyard/producer. This means that, even if you know your grapes (like you know you want a Merlot) with French wine you must know in which Appellations Merlot is grown. This sounds like a nightmare, but it's made easier by the fact that with each Appellation come a set of rules which dictate everything from what types of grapes can be used there to alcohol content. So what this means is that once you know a few of the important wine regions and appellations, you can pretty much know what type of wine you are getting from the label or wine list. Of course, quality is another issue which really requires knowledge of the individual producers in that Appellation, but that's no worse than knowing who makes a good Merlot in Napa (and price can be reasonable guide).

A couple of other points about this. In France, people don't think about ordering a glass of Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc. Instead they just think about ordering a St. Emilion or a Sancerre respectively. Also, in France, winemakers tend to blend several grape varieties together whereas it is more common in CA to have single varieties (in the US they like to keep things simple for us). As a result, you find some really amazing combinations of aromas and tastes in French wine. OK, see next post...