In message >
Mike Tommasi > wrote:


> Look, when it comes to France most of AFW seems hung up on Bordeaux...
> and of course, nobody I know in France drinks that any more, not when
> they are paying at least... ;-) Most of us are selling off our Bordeaux
> stocks to buy... Loire?

Not my experience of France - certainly not true of my father in law
just down the road from Mike Tommasi at Six-Fours (and needless to say
certainly not true of the Bordelais!)

In my experience France remains very regional in its wine drinking
habits with local wines, if they exist, being heavily favoured over
other French wines and nobody else really getting look in at all -
which I personally can understand: when there is so much available
from your own country and when its quality is rising all the time why
go for the unknown? Especially as, judging by what little of other
country's wines you see on French supermarket shelves, the foreign
wine which is available in France is almost invariably limited and
inferior to the native product?

The UK is fortunate in having a wide range of choice and a lot of good
specialised merchants. I just hope the incresing dominance of
supermarkets at one end and the not altogether benign influence of
some (foreign) gurus will not change that.

Timothy Hartley