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There can be little question that France represents the benchmark against which wines everywhere are generally measured. Little wonder: they've had plenty of time to get it right, with the earliest wine grapes being planted during the sixth, or possibly even the seventh, century B.C. in what is today Provence and the Languedoc. Leave it to the Romans, however, to establish what are now regarded as the "blue chip" regions: Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, and the Loire.
To best understand French wine requires a completely different mindset from what we're accustomed to in the U.S. Here we think in terms of grape variety, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, etc. In France, however, a wine's identity is derived from its geographic place of origin. The names of such well-known French wines as Bordeaux or Pouilly-Fuissé, for example, are in fact the names of the places where the grapes were grown and the wine made. These geographic distinctions have
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There can be little question that France represents the benchmark against which wines everywhere are generally measured. Little wonder: they've had plenty of time to get it right, with the earliest wine grapes being planted during the sixth, or possibly even the seventh, century B.C. in what is today Provence and the Languedoc. Leave it to the Romans, however, to establish what are now regarded as the "blue chip" regions: Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, and the Loire.
To best understand French wine requires a completely different mindset from what we're accustomed to in the U.S. Here we think in terms of grape variety, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, etc. In France, however, a wine's identity is derived from its geographic place of origin. The names of such well-known French wines as Bordeaux or Pouilly-Fuissé, for example, are in fact the names of the places where the grapes were grown and the wine made. These geographic distinctions have been formally codified since 1932 with the establishment of a government agency, the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO), which regulates everything from which grape varieties can be planted where to limits on crop yield per hectare. All of this is inextricably bound up with the concept of terroir, the (very French!) notion that each wine region (or vineyard) is defined by its own unique combination of natural factors, such as the soil (composition, structure, and drainage characteristics), altitude, slope, orientation to the sun, and microclimate. Despite a certain amount of abuse of the idea, such as downright lousy wines being excused on the grounds that they're "typical expressions of their terroir," the theory is nevertheless firmly grounded in observable reality.
We'll be the first to admit that we here at Woodland Hills Wine Company are shameless Francophiles, but to us that doesn't mean focusing obsessively on the "glamour" areas like Bordeaux and Burgundy. Frankly, we'd just as soon see you explore the diversity that is French wine, as there are countless hidden gems to be discovered in little pockets of France you may not yet know exist.
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