2005, the year of cross-breeding

Posted on | June 27, 2005

No, I am not going to talk to you about Prince Albert. Even though, if I believe an article I gleaned from le Figaro, photographs of a handsome chubby baby on the cover of Paris-Match, can multiply the readership of a newspaper. Perhaps that would also work with a blog…

No, I have simply been fascinated by the tendency of ‘cross-breeding’ at the wine show - Vinexpo 2005. Whilst some brands launch ‘à la franco-français’ (Rue de France, for example, whose label is the reproduction of a typical French street), others nimbly cross-breed expressions, names, layouts, typographies.

After Gallo, who launched the amusing ‘French Bicycle’ and ‘Pont d’Avignon’, after the ‘Fat Bastard’ which has exploded across the counters in the US and the UK (the site is right on, go and see it, here) but I ask who dares touch on an American literary icon, with Walden, well it’s Ginestet with their ‘French Roots’, a selection of well-chosen grape varieties, USD7 in a wine shop in New York, which should soon add up to 4 or 5 million bottles.

What has astonished me this year, running from one end of the Fair to the other, is this tendency of cross-breeding. The French take anglo-saxon copy, Americans steal our designs, our rhymes, our symbols, cognac starts making vodka, the Argentinians imitate the Australians, who are starting to make Italian style wines who… good, you’ve got the picture. You’ve got to be smart to pick your way through that lot. This is the era of the brand, supplied with generally good wines from co-operatives, under the banner of ‘vin de pays’/grape varieties, from a zone even larger than the AOC. The latter should be worried, believe the astrologist Madame Irma.

OK, since this evening we are looking into the future, I am almost sure that this is going to work this summer: it’s the new single of Chimêne Badi. I tell you. It’s called ‘retomber amoureux’ and, if I have any sense, it’s going to be a topper on the radio this summer. The forty-year-old hippies are going to adore it: those who like it ‘without sulfur’, those who only swear by Carignan and those who adooooore Pomerol, in fact everyone’s going to find themselves and clasp each other tight whilst listening to this song. Oh, my ears are humming already: ‘This Bizeul, what’s he up to! Must he have an opinion on everything! Music now, where will it stop…?’

Hervè Bizeul

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