Wood shavings in French wine

Government OKs practice, common elsewhere, of adding oak flavoring

By ANGELA DOLAND
ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARIS - France's government said Wednesday it will soon allow vintners to flavor their wine with wood shavings - a moneysaving shortcut to help face off tough international competition, and a change that immediately angered purists.

It was a sharp break in tradition: Flavoring wine with wood chips was, until recently, a technique that France's vintners were proud to have nothing to do with. But many vineyard owners, whose fortunes have flagged in recent years, now want access to the same techniques as their competitors.

Wood chips can be added to wines to give them an oak flavor without using expensive wooden barrels. Such cost-cutting tactics are already common across the rest of the winemaking world, including Australia and the Americas.

"The use of wood shavings is already authorized by the European Community and will soon be entered into national regulation," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement after a meeting with representatives of winemaking regions. The goal is to "open up the range of authorized winemaking practices," the statement said.

"It is a remarkable and very realistic advance - it's practically miraculous," said Roland Feredj, director of a Bordeaux wine council known by the initials CIVB. "In general, France always wants to give lessons to the rest of the world, and in winemaking we are realizing that the Australians and the Americans also have things to teach us about wine regulations."

The government announced a $108 million plan last week to help the French wine industry, which is suffering from overproduction, dropping consumption in France and competition abroad. Of that, $14.4 million will go toward boosting exports, Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau said Wednesday in parliament. The money will pay for studies and panels as well as a new logo to promote French wines.

"We have to make wine for consumers, not wine that producers dream of," Bernard Pomel, the author of a wine report commissioned by the ministry, told le Figaro newspaper.

quelle: http://www.winebusiness.com/

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