JP Chenet says yes to cross-regional wines

If you’re not already sick to the back teeth of me harping on about the EU wine reform, here I am again with more updates.

Les Grand Chais de France group claims to be the largest exporter of wines from France, representing one in every five bottles of French wine sold abroad.

I’ve just spoken to Tim North, UK director of Les Grand Chais as part of my research for an article in Meiningers. Following the EU wine reform and the creation of vin de France, the white wines of France’s biggest brand JP Chenet, will be voluntarily downgraded from vin de pays to vin de France so it can blend across regions this year. North said, “At JP Chenet we think that there are big quality advantages of being able to blend from different regions especially for whites. For example Sauvignon Blanc is not aromatic in the Languedoc Roussillon; it is in the Loire but it can be a bit thin in cool years and we can also take some fruit from Gascony. We think that we can offer a great price to quality ratio by cross regional blending.”

While smaller producers oppose this sort of cross-regional blending, as it goes against all notions of terroir (or sense of place), this will enable the brand to compete with the New World’s big boys without previous restrictions.

“We were able to do this with vin de pays du vignobles de France previously but it was so complicated. We had to go through a bureaucratic process in each region before blending. We did this with our Kiwi Sauvignon in 2008 for the first time. We went through the whole rigmarole but we no longer have to get the ‘agrément’, we can please ourselves.”

“It’s what the Aussies had been doing for ages and we can do it now.”

The producer’s reds look likely to remain unchanged at least for this vintage, claiming there is little benefit in sourcing wines from outside the Languedoc with so many grape varieties and growers to choose from.