A French winemaker whose wine is illegal in his home country

Winemaker Maxime Chapoutier will be arrested if he tries to sell two of his latest wines in his native France.

“There will probably be an outcry over these wines in France, and that will be a good thing,” he says. “Sometimes you need to be provocative to drive change.”

The two bottles in question, one white and one red, would be illegal in France because they are made from a mixture of French and Australian wines.

Under French and European Union law, it is forbidden to make wine that combines EU and non-EU fruits. In France in particular, the authorities take such things very seriously.

The French wine industry has a popular word called “terroir,” which applies to all the environmental factors that affect the vines that grow in a vineyard, such as soil, climate, and altitude. As a result, wines from a particular place are held in highest esteem.

Add a strict system of appellation or classification for France's wine regions, and the idea of ​​blending French and Australian wines to create a global blend would scare away many French wine lovers.

However, Maxime has done this, and all thanks to one word – Brexit.

Because while it can't sell wine in the EU, it can do so in the UK now that London no longer has to follow food and drink rules set by Brussels.

Maxime created the wine in partnership with UK online retailer The Wine Society, calling it Hemisphere Red and Hemisphere White. The red is made from the Syrah grape, or Shiraz as it is called in Australia, while the white is a blend of the Marsanne and Viognier varieties.

Australian red and white wine ingredients are shipped in bulk to the UK, where they are blended with wines from the Northern France and Roussillon regions before bottling.

Maxime, who works with the famous Rhône-based wine company, says that to respect France's focus on terroir, there should be scope for the global terroir to be sold as well.

“Chapoutier has been making wine for over 200 years, and is very driven, biodynamic,” he says. “But more and more people are turning their back on French wines because they don't understand the complex nomenclature rules.

“We need to adapt to consumers and make wines more accessible, which international blenders can help do. Maybe EU law will change. It's also more environmentally friendly to ship wine from Australia to Europe in bulk, as you don't have the weight of all the bottles.”

Another wine company that now makes wine by combining grapes from two continents is Australian company Penfolds. It sells reds made from Australian and California grapes, and other grapes that blend Australian and French. Again, they can't be sold in the EU, but they can in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere.

Penfolds refers to these blends as “the wines of the world,” and says they “possess an otherness that can be described as worldly.” Whatever it's supposed to mean.

Unsurprisingly, some traditional winemakers are not in favor of this development. One such person is Jas Swan, an independent winemaker in Germany.

While the two powerful blends of chapoutier and penfolds are carefully made from high-quality grapes, and priced accordingly, she fears that if the trend grows, it will mean a lot of cheap, low-grade wines.

“I think these wines will have nothing left of any Terrorist, even before they leave their continent,” she says. “Those wines have only seen machine work, heavy additives to keep them clean, and are made to be easy to drink for the masses.

“Why can't consumers be more demanding? Consumerism is crazy.”

Peter Richards, who holds the best qualifications in the world wine industry, Master of Wine (MW), also sniffed. “The idea of ​​cross-country blending with wine is not something I find outrageous in and of itself,” he says. “What worries me most is that this is about creating novelty for novelty’s sake.”

His wife, Susie Barry, who is also an MW, adds: “I am still convinced that wine made by blending grapes from different countries can be great in taste.”

By contrast, wine writer Jamie Judd says developing bicontinental wines “is actually a fun idea.”

“If the wines are good, well made from good Vineyard sites — and not just a gimmick that blends cheap bulk wines and then slaps a big margin on the wine — that's very interesting.

“The basic foundation of great wine is the idea of ​​terroir—that wines come from a place, and their flavor expresses that place in unique ways. But not all wines have to be wines, and there is room for wines like this.”

“In some ways, there's a lot of skill required to blend the right wines together to create something interesting that comes from such different places.”

Pierre Mansour, head of purchasing for the Wine Association, says he and his colleagues came up with the idea of ​​creating two wines made from grapes from different continents as part of the company's 15th birthday celebrations.

“We were thinking about the future of wine, and we wanted to do something innovative. Ultimately we thought one area of ​​innovation would be blending, to create a wine that could mitigate the impact of climate change on a particular country.

“And from the carbon footprint it's out of sight that it's environmentally friendly to ship wine in bulk from Australia to the UK. But at the same time we expected the 'followers' to basically say this against the French wine director.”

“So we approached Chabot, thinking they might say 'Are you crazy, how dare you insult us,' but they were great. They were really enthusiastic.”