Recently, a blog site has had comments discussing wines in the United States and France. One post went as far a saying that only French wines had great quality and that US wines could not compare. While I certainly believe that some French wines are very good and certainly deserve rating highly, there are also US wines that are very good and rated highly. Did anyone forget the Judgment of Paris 1976 or a repeat of that only two years ago?

Last year, we visited a winery on Long Island where we met Eric Frye, the winemaker for Lenz Winery, who believes in the concept of a “fruit salad” when making his wines. In the tasting room, a chart was displayed that showed the ratings of French wines and his wines. As we reported in our article about our experience at Lenz Winery: Lenz Winery is proud of their ranking in blind tastings that compare their wines with others from California and France. Recently several wine professionals blind tasted five flights with four wines in each flight. Two of the wines in the flight were from Lenz and two were from a top French producer. The Lenz wines did extremely well. In three of the five flights, the Lenz wines placed first and second. The average score for the Lenz wines was 90 points while the average score for the French wines was 89. These blind tastings have shown that Lenz wines can stand up to the French wines and at a fraction of the price.

It’s interesting to note the history of wine. In the 1800’s, the French were having good and bad times with their wines. In referring to French wine, Tyler Colman in his recently published book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink, wrote about the quality of wine in the mid-19th century France. “Where wine was produced, it was abundant, but it was often so bad that peasants claimed it took three men to get it down: the one who drank, the one who held him, and the one who made him drink.”

Times change and wine changes with the times. Every country’s wines change whether the cause is the environment, politics, or consumer consumption. This leaves open the idea that great wine can be made around the world but that there can always be a few “bad” years.

Here’s hoping that 2008 is a great vintage!

Cheers!