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The PodcastWith this podcast, we at Cheapwinefinder.com discuss getting started drinking French wine. With all the different wine regions and classifications, it can get very confusing. We try to keep it simple, most of the grapes used are familiar to American wine drinkers, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc. But the producers and the different regions may be intimidating, so we strip it down to the basics. Just concentrate on what French wines are available at your local wine shop and know which wine importer matches your palate. So check it out!!
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[Music] hey it’s Dave from uh cheep winf finder.com and today we’re going to talk about French wine not in the way you usually hear about French wine we’re not going to talk about which wines to buy and domain this and Chateau that and you know this region this Village cuz everything in France is very local oriented it’s this Village this side of a river that side of River and we’re not really going to talk about any of that we’re going to talk about wines that fall into the cheap wine finder price range is going to be under 20 bucks and we’re going to talk about how to find them because it’s not always easy uh there’s it gets complicated over there you know because it’s all the different regions and all the different rules and regulations and this is this is AOC wine this is a grand crew wine this is a Villages wine this is igp Vin deposits table wine it all gets very confusing and it doesn’t really matter in the price category that we’re talking about because a good producer of a lower designated wine in all likelihood is probably better than a Soo producer from a high-end area it’s the producer that matters so how do you find these wines and that’s what we’re going to talk about um so that’s the next part France is a great place to look for Value priced wine because France is is somewhere where people do drink a great deal of wine every day and therefore they’re drinking value priced wines that’s just how it works if people can’t spend $100 a day on wine some can but most can’t and another thing about um France is that all the grapes that were used to coming out of California and Washington and Oregon and Chile and New Zealand and Australia are all there in France Cabernet Sao Cabernet Fran chard PIR sa Blanc bubblies SRA all the same grapes that you used in California are in France only different they’re not going to taste exactly the same they’re not going to be made exactly the same it’s kind of funny in California you’re always finding wine producers talking about how they are Burgundian or bordeau like or Ron Valley and you never ever hear a France producer saying they’re California like it just doesn’t work that way but you can find uh wines from grapes that you are very familiar with but are different so if you’re in a rut and say you’re in a Chardonnay rut and you you know I don’t I I got to break out of this where you can actually have another Shard but coming from France it’s going to be different you can have another Cabernet 7 young coming from France from below actually to me the only place they make really good Mero is France Pau so going to France is kind of a good place to get the wines because they’re familiar cuz when it comes to Wine you know French people speak our language and it’s not the same thing so you’re getting your pallet reorganized a little bit when you’re drinking French wine so yeah so France is great and there’s a bazillion places to find or areas in France that make really good affordable wine because they drink a lot of wine there they have to make a lot of wine and then plus they’re you know they’re pretty good at this point at exporting wines that we like to drink so okay so how then do you go about finding them and that’s the next part as for finding French wine in a lot of cases you are limited by the stores that are near you the wine shops near you you can always buy wine online um you know I live in Chicago and with an a half hour ride in like any direction there’s probably 40 to 50 wine shops or you know any kind of shop that will Li liquor stores grocery stores that will sell wine I mean it doesn’t occur to me to buy it online I guess depends on where you live but for the most part we’re limited by what’s available in a reasonable driving distance and so that’s something about one there you’re you’re pretty much going to have to buy it from the shops near you but there’s one good thing about that cuz import wine all import wine and French wine in particular is vetted by the time it gets to your stor shell it’s gone to through a several different sources first of all order goes to France and they find out about a wine producer who is doing very well in France and they go to the producer and they make a deal to make wine or even the same wines they sell in France and Shi into the United States so that importer goes hm I can sell that to my Distributors so it goes in he goes to the Distributors and across the United States there’s usually distributors in every market and what across the country there’s a bunch of different distributors and Distributors taste the wine and they go H my wine shops will like this wine and it gets to the wine shops and the wine shops go yeah the this wine in this price range is something my customers are going to like so that doesn’t mean that every wine on the Shelf is going to be something you’re going to like but if you’re into wine there’s something there you’re going to like so it is vetted you can pretty much trust that the bottles are going to be of pretty good quality now you got to hope the wine shop takes care of it and the shipping did a good job and all that sort of thing but most of the wines that are getting to you you know even from the big name importers to the little importers are going to be good quality win Somebody went on on a limb to choose these wines and then it passed through several other people who drank it and decided they could sell it too so when it comes to you you have a selection now you then have to figure out which of the wines in the selection are wines you like and that isn’t all that hard cuz when you go to a wine shop if you don’t really know too much about French wine and you know you know you read about it but the ones you read about are all way too expensive they don’t spend a lot of ink uh writing about the inexpensive value priced wines go to the you go on a day when it’s not super crowded and you know nowadays when everything just opening up again and you can finally get back into wine shops ask the clerk tell them what you want what the price range is what you’re looking for and they will try to find something you want it’s it’s it’s always a good idea I know a bunch of different one shop clerks and they want to help you they want you to give them as much information as they can so they can dial in what you want you know the guy who comes in and buys $1 or $200 bottles of wine come in once a month every 3 weeks but since you’re buying 10 $12 bottles of wine they want you coming back twice a week they want to really find out wines you like so you keep coming back so that’s how they make their money so ask them it’s not a bad idea to ask um what wines are which why these wines are good you know tell them what you want when you come back the next dayi it was kind of good but I was hoping for this they go aha try this one and that’s really the easiest way ask them they will there if the shop does not help you then find a shop that does and there’s and then that if you actually start to learn a little bit you can go into following the importer I hear a lot of people saying the good advice is when you find a um a French wine or any kind of import one is to get your phone out and take a picture of the label the one that you really like cuz you know it’s hard sometimes to remember everything CU it’s in most of the time it’s in a foreign language you got to remember names that you probably can’t pronounce that well and and that’s fine but I think a better thing to do is to get your phone out and take a picture of the back label cuz that is where the information is going to be on who the Importer is and you’re talking about wines coming in from Europe and France particularly who the Importer is has a huge a has a huge impact on the wine uh I know for myself if I ever see an Eric uh Solomon selections wine I’m probably going to like it well you know a lot of the wines I like come from him um you know and there’s there’s J oronas and Broadbent and skullnick I think and Wilson Daniels there’s a bunch of good ones out there I’m not I’m not saying some are better than others I think they all have good things going for them some are more highend some are more you know value oriented they’re all out there but they all and there’s also local people who bring in wines just to your local area you know people that aren’t well known outside of their area but they’re doing a really good job they’re finding little niches that aren’t being cater to that they’re they’re finding wines for you so if you find an import wine and you see oh that’s the import it doesn’t matter who it is I’m you know I told you who I look for and you look at the shelves like really you should be trainning him around don’t worry what the front label is how pretty it is or whatever oh I like this guy or the front label is good and I never heard this uh importer I’m going to take a chance on it and that’s where the wine you know that’s that’s where you learn about wine cuz the importers bringing the bigger importers will bring in wine Across the Nation you’re going to have a good selection some of them are just small prod small importers you might have the only that wine as in your Market nowhere else but learn your importers cuz if you have your pallet match up to them it makes everything much easier um and then certain importers have Wines in certain price range it kind of Narrows things down because you know even though there’s millions of bottles of wine coming out of France the selection in your hometown might be well will be far far smaller than that and since you don’t need to know oh this is from this Village and this is from that Village and oh this producer’s been around since 1742 asking the clerk and looking for the producer or the Importer goes a long way by getting you where you need to go to find great French wines and that’s kind of the key to it I mean you can you don’t have to know you can you can study wine you can study French wine you have a great fun going through all these different wines but to find wines for drinking in your price range you just need to ask some questions and see who’s who and you know because the individual wineries might not be everywhere but the importers could be so keep the um find a wi shop that if you ask questions they will answer you properly and find out who the the um importers are you don’t need uh intimate knowledge of French wine to find really good affordable French wines they’re shortcuts you know you talk to the wine shop find out what they have available and what they suggest you should have figure out that you like this producer that producer this producer for this wine this producer for sparkling wine uh take chances on things um and bubbly you know champagne sucks up all the oxygen in France they’re the big dogs when it comes to Bubbles there’s tons of other sparkling wines in France from different regions that they would love to charge you a lot of money for their wines but they can’t cuz everybody who gets French sparkling wine by champagne take chances on wines you haven’t heard of there’s all sorts of good and there’s the they make them in the traditional uh champagne Styles and they make them in the Italian Styles you know so that you get a lot of different wines affordable wines you don’t need to know ton to find good french wine and it’s almost always worth it you’re you know sometimes when I’ve been drinking a lot of California wines when I first get a French wine like a French Cabernet 7 young it hits your pallet differently um it’s going to have more structure it’s going to have more tannin it’s they’re going to not do it exactly the way they’ll do it in California or Washington State and at first I’m like you know I don’t know if I really like this that much you know there’s you know you know I want to go home I want to drink American wine but by the end of the first glass or the second glass you start to get back into it and start to get acclimated to it which is a great way because it kind of reorganizes how you think about wine and why you’re drinking wine and what to expect from wine and when you do go back to your Sonoma or your paser Robos or just California and the label wines you kind of appreciate them for what they are cuz they’re not bad you know it’s like not like French wines way better than than American wine you know I don’t think so I like them both but once you learn a little bit about the French wine um it kind of opens up your perspective of American wine too so you don’t need to be you know a genius you don’t need to study you just need to take some shortcuts and they’re there the wines are vetted taking a chance Is Not a Bad Thing CU it’s gone through four or five different people all tasting it and all saying they can sell it so there you go give it a shot and if you want something under 10 bucks you want a $6 French wine then Trader Joe’s and ALDI and all those kind of things are great places for that if you just want to give it you know try them out before you go to the wine shop and try something different so that’s that um try French wine it’s not that difficult if you use the shortcuts if you want to learn more by all means learn more but you can start drinking great wine uh just by figuring out a few of the shortcuts and and that’s it so drink up uh keep a cheap have a great time be safe out there and adios bye-bye [Music]