The notion that French wine has fallen into the hands of philistines is sure to find an audience when the documentary "Mondovino" is released in L.A. theaters April 29. Director Jonathan Nossiter belabors that idea for two hours, 17 minutes and 11 seconds, cutting back and forth between crusty traditionalists in worn sweaters and suspendered trousers who absolutely love terroir and their spiritual opposites: chain-smoking pragmatists in fancy cars who hawk modern methods of manipulating wine.
"Mondovino" is a lot of things; subtle, however, isn't one of them.
The French wine industry is in crisis. More comfortable basking in tradition than questioning it, French winemakers are rethinking the rules governing how they make and name their wines, the grapes they grow and how they are grown. Even the look of their wine labels is being reconsidered. The French government is scrambling to promote its wines in America, even -- gasp -- considering a Madison Avenue advertising campaign. (Champagne already has one, and it's the one French region for which sales are actually climbing.)
French wine -- A graphic with an article about French wine in Wednesday's Food section overstated the quantity of exports. The 1999 figure should have been 1.6 billion liters, not 160 billion. The 2004 figure should have been 1.42 billion liters, not 142.1 billion.
French wine -- A graphic with an article about French wine in last week's Food section overstated the quantity of exports. The 1999 figure should have been 1.6 billion liters, not 160 billion. The 2004 figure should have been 1.42 billion liters, not 142.1 billion.
"It has taken a while for our producers to understand that there is a problem," says Christian Berger, the agricultural counselor with the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. And even now that they have accepted that fact, "there is no unanimity at all on what should be done."
Wine looms large on the French economic landscape. Representing 12% of France's agricultural production, it accounts for $9.9 billion of the country's gross domestic product. French wine sales worldwide have been gradually eroding for years. The situation became a crisis last year when wine exports (excluding Champagne) fell 6.7% in volume and 9.2% in value on the heels of 2003 sales, which were considered dismal, according to the French Federation of Exporters of Wines & Spirits.
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