After a hard days work I wanted a red for a simple steak & garden vegetable dinner… I grabbed a french wine, nothing special, I knew that… after I opened it I really knew that… Its clear some french wine is far from great!
Back to the wine cellar and got a good Aussie wine that I know and love.
FYI – if you are trying to sell wine on a global market, keep it simple, honest and write the label in the language for the country you sell in… A wine label with a pretty picture and written in beautiful language is lovely to look at, but still tells us buggar all… a label’s purpose is to build brand yes, but also to inform the consumer.
Life is too short to drink wine we don’t appreciate… even if the rest can be used to make a reasonable ‘coq au vin’ or ‘boeuf bourguignon’.
The Wine Wankers 
Obviously my sister snuck down into your wine cellar and left a special bottle of vinegar down there to fool you 🙂
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damn your sister… tell her she owes me!
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See? I knew it couldn’t be you making a mistake!
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Even though I’m sitting here having my morning coffee on the other side of the world …. your simple steak and garden veg supper sounds very very good … I should wait a few hours though 🙂
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That’s The worst. You spend good money and get something that is completely undrinkable.
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live and learn…. By drinking something I don’t like makes me appreciate what I do like even more 🙂
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I think it’s starting to get better here. One simple rule is NEVER buy Bordeaux unless you can afford it. Only the very finest are worth drinking. I used to collect wine, in another life, before I came to France. I had ’96 Cheval Blanc, ’96 Angelus, ectc…I never got to drink them,,just sold them to pay for the endless house conversion! I drink a lot of good, simple Loire reds, such as Chinon, young. The Rhone is my real hunting ground,,,,but fuck Bordeaux.
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I agree… French wine comes with a price tag… Unfortunately I like Burgundy, buggar 😦
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You’ll need to put your Aussie Pinot up against some Burgundy!
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They used to do the France stuff here in the 80s but didn’t do casks so no one likes them and made no sense. There Lambroosco is ok and some here do casks.
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I know you love your cask wine but you should try a KOONOWLA “RINGMASTER” Shiraz, it will be right up your alley.
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Ok. Thanx for the tip. I will definitely try some as long as it isnt one of those expensive ones hey.
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It’s a wine that keeps on giving
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French wine labels are a pain in the arse, always have been
On a happier note, where did you get your wine rack?! I want one!
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Its a cool freestanding rack, sits in the middle of the cellar with whites on one side and reds on the other!… Heavy duty plyboard with loads of holes cut in it, with a base and sides to hold it solid, kind of like 2x back to back free standing book shelves, the more wine you add the more solid it gets, I have accidentally stumbled into it and it doesn’t move!… My local wine shop were going to throw it out!
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I agree with you about keeping it honest on the labels! However, as far as the quality goes, that’s just how the French write their wine labels. You have to understand (which I’m sure you do!) the region and ranking the vineyard carries.
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I guess that is the issue, many people want to spend the money, but don’t have the time to educate themselves, if the label was honest and clear, then they would buy the right wine again and again…. it is a stubborn old world issue that will never change I fear… I am currently getting my head around wine from China and have the same issues!
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I will say, some do use fancy labels to mask crap wine! I was a victim to pretty labels (lol) myself until I started attending wine classes and reading wine books.
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Same 🙂
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If I put on my average Australian wine drinker hat, at best we see Bordeaux and assume it should be a good wine not knowing how the labelling system, region and châteaux rankings work. To me, that is the issue moreso than anyone trying to dupe the public, though no doubt the crap producers play on all this so as to sell their wines on the mass market to the many that are unaware how it all works. It’s a “well you should just know” system and I suppose that attitude has failed French wine on the mass international market. As someone else mentioned, there’s a lot of crap Bordeaux and you have to know the labelling system, the region and rankings, and pay a lot of money, to get a really good drop, although I’ve had some good Bordeaux from châteaux not ranked highly.
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in Italy we use to say the french wine producers are even better as promoters of their own product rather than purely wine producers…Must admit that there were years Italy was having less or more the same orientation….Since then someone understood that the time for telling jokes was ending….so, they started making wine again….:)
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An excellent trove you have there at your disposal. And I do appreciate your recent visit to my page as well. Cheers, thanks a lot.
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yum!!!
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Awesome…. never waste, good for cooking if nothing else.
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[…] I am so glad this Bordeaux turned out to be quite enjoyable because both Stuart and I have had a bad run of French wine lately. I was starting to think you could only enjoy good French wine if you paid through the nose so […]
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Thank you for this site, can blissfully state we now have a steam
shower of our very own and we love it
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