John - Santa Clara wrote:I've had similar experiences with more frequency in French wines than in California, New Zealand or Chilean wines.
Why could that be?
I've seen plenty of bottle variation in CA wines, and enormous producer variation in wines from the same vineyard. But to me, French wine always seems to be a bit of a crapshoot. Is it just me?
The easy answer is that French producers are more 'traditional' and less likely to put out a standardized industrial product that will taste the same everytime it is opened. But I think that is over-generalizing.
One issue is knowledge/experience. I have a lot more knowledge and experience with French wine than with Chilean wine. So it is a lot easier for me to buy a French wine that I know I will like as opposed to a Chilean wine. The reverse will be true for other people.
Another issue is stability. Right now there are lots of high quality small producers being imported from France to the US (like the Cotats mentioned above). The wines are great but like any artisanal product they are fragile and once they get abused by all the tiers of the US alcohol system, they do not always show their best. So buying artisanal French wines in the wrong US stores is definitely a crapshoot. Kind of like ordering fish in a diner. It may be a higher grade product than the crappy burgers but the crappy burgers are probably more reliable and more likely to be in 'good shape'.
Yet another issue is ripeness. French wines are less reliably ripe than California wines. But whether that is good or bad or a crapshoot depends what you are looking for.
And to go even further, there is a certain prestige for places like Bordeaux that allows high volume importation of crappy wine. People will buy because of the label. Go into any mediocre wine shop and you'll see what I mean. But this is also tied in with my point above about shopping in the wrong stores.