I love France and I love French wine. My wife and I have spent a lot of holidays and weekends away driving through the French countryside and visiting vineyards. France is also great for organic wine - they produce a lot of it, and much of this wine is very good, if not excellent. The thing that lets France down, though, is the 3 most famous regions: Bordeaux, Champagne and Burgundy. In practically all the other wine regions of France, the very best winemakers and vineyards operate organically or biodynamically. Some of the biggest names in provincial France fly the flag for organic agriculture. Vineyards like Huet and Papin-Chevalier in the Loire, Cazes Freres in Languedoc, Zind-Humbrecht or Domaine Gresser in Alsace - these are the best winemakers of their regions, and they manage to make first class wines completely organically and, with the possible exception of Zind-Humbrecht, at a reasonable price.
Where France lets itself down, is the big regions charging the serious money for their wines. Very few of the first growth Bordeaux make their wine organically, and certainly the big champagne houses don't. For these people it seems to be much more about profit and mass-production rather than care for the environment or pride in their own agriculture.
Next time you're wine shopping, why not search out organic wine and do your bit for the environment, your health, and your taste buds!
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