The French winemaker whose wines are illegal in his country of origin

Winemaker Maxime Chapoutier would be arrested if he tried to sell two of his new wines in his native France.

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

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

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

The French wine industry has a famous word called “terroir,” which applies to all the environmental factors that affect the growth of vines in a vineyard, such as soil, climate, and elevation. As a result, wines from a specific location are held in the highest esteem.

Add to that a strict naming or classification system for France’s wine regions, and the idea of ​​mixing French and Australian wine to create a global hybrid would horrify many French wine lovers.

However, Maxime has done just that, and all thanks to one word: Brexit.

Because while you can’t sell the two wines in the EU, you can in the UK now that London no longer has to follow the food and drink rules set by Brussels.

Maxime has created the wines in partnership with UK online retailer The Wine Society, where they are called Hemispheres Red and Hemispheres White. The red is made from Syrah grapes, or shiraz as they are called in Australia, while the white is a blend of the Marsanne and Viognier varieties.

The components of Australian red and white wine are shipped in bulk to the United Kingdom, where they are blended with wine from France’s northern Rhône and Roussillon regions before being bottled.

Maxime, who works for his family’s celebrated wine company, Chapoutier, based in the Rhône, says that while he respects France’s focus on terroir, there should be room for global blends to be sold as well.

“Chapoutier has been making wine for over 200 years, very terroir-based and biodynamic,” he says. “But more and more people are turning their back on French wines because they don’t understand the complicated designation of origin rules.

“We need to adapt to consumers and make wines more accessible, something that international blends can help to achieve. Perhaps EU legislation will change. It is also more environmentally friendly to ship wine from Australia to Europe in bulk, as it is not “It has the weight of all glass bottles.”

Another wine company that now makes wines combining grapes from two continents is the Australian company Penfolds. It sells red wines made from Australian and Californian grapes, and others that blend Australian and French grapes. Again, they cannot be sold in the EU, but they can be sold in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere.

Penfolds refers to these blends as “world wine” and says they “possess an otherness that can best be described as worldly.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

It is not surprising that some more traditional winegrowers are not in favor of this evolution. One of those people is Jas Swan, an independent winemaker based in Germany.

While Chapoutier and Penfolds’ two-continent blends are carefully made from quality grapes and priced accordingly, she fears that if the trend grows it will mean much more cheap, low-quality wine will go on sale.

“I think that these types of wines would have no terroir left, even before leaving their continent,” he says. “Those wines would have only been machine-crafted, with heavy additions 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 world wine industry’s highest qualification, Master of Wine (MW), is also dismissive. “The idea of ​​blending wines between countries is not something that I find scandalous in itself,” he says. “My concern is more that it’s about creating novelty for novelty’s sake.”

His wife, Susie Barrie, who is also MW, adds: “I’m still not convinced that a wine made by blending grapes from different countries can taste great.”

By contrast, wine writer Jamie Goode says that developing wine from two continents “is actually a pretty fun idea.”

“If the wines are good and well made from good vineyards, and not just a gimmick to blend cheap bulk wines and then put a huge margin on the wine, then this is quite interesting.

“The fundamental basis of good wine is the notion of terroir: that wines come from a place and their flavor uniquely expresses that place. But not all wines have to be terroir wines, and there is a place for wines like this.

“In some ways, it takes a lot of skill to pair the right wines and create something interesting from such different places.”

Pierre Mansour, head of purchasing at The Wine Society, 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 150th anniversary celebrations.

“We were thinking about the future of wine and wanted to do something innovative. In the end we thought that one area of ​​innovation is blending, creating a wine that can mitigate the impact of climate change in a particular country.

“And from a carbon footprint point of view, it’s more environmentally friendly to ship wine in bulk from Australia to the UK. But at the same time we expected the ‘terrorists’ to say ‘wait, this is fundamentally against the French principle of wine’.

“So we approached Chapoutier, thinking they might say ‘are you crazy? How dare you insult us?’, but they were cool. They were really excited.”