If I had a bottle of good French wine for every time the headline France Fights Back has appeared in wine magazines these past few years, I'd have the makings of a respectable cellar. La belle France has been taking a bit of a hammering in markets such as ours of late - its everyday wines often outshone by those of the New World, its fine wines shockingly expensive. But there are signs of a campaign to win consumers back. Big-name negociants are in the front line, dispatching their field-marshals to lead the assault on Dublin. Marc Chapoutier from the Rhone firm and Pierre-Henry Gagey of the well-known Burgundy house Louis Jadot were here the other week to give a French wine workshop for Grants of Ireland. Catherine Leonard from Bouchard ere Pere et Fils also flew in from Burgundy to give a masterclass at Findlaters's Wine Road Show. Both exercises were stirring reminders that France, when on form, is invincible.
Take Chapoutier first - a company whose wines up to a decade ago were "generally hard and dry, lacking in charm and flesh" - the bitter verdict of Rhone expert Remington Norman. In 1988, the seventh generation of Chapoutiers, marketing man Marc and his winemaking brother Michel, decided to push for quality. Instead of buying in so many grapes, they would acquire more vineyards of their own, reduce yields, treasure old vines, use wild yeasts . . . And, most dramatically, they would move from organic to biodynamic methods.
"Now we have the largest biodynamic domaine in France," Marc Chapoutier reports proudly. "Every year we have had good surprises - cuvees of outstanding quality, or much better wines than expected in difficult vintages." What is the difference between organic and biodynamic viticulture - apart from the fact that the latter involves carrying out certain vineyard tasks such as pruning according to the cycles of earth, sun and moon? "Organic methods are curative - you can solve certain problems if you act quickly - whereas biodynamics is preventative. It's a much broader approach, built around the importance of keeping the balance of nature."
Based in Tain l'Hermitage in the northern Rhone (but active in Provence and Australia), Chapoutier now owns 60 per cent of the vineyards that provide their grapes. The commitment to quality is based on a notion every wine lover will cheer at. "We're not just making something to drink - we are producing a pleasure," Marc says - and if the wines he presented here are anything to go by, they're succeeding. With extra pleasure in mind, he gave a vital tip. "Don't serve our red wines too warm or you'll only get alcohol. At cellar temperature the fruit comes through with far more aromas. Also, if it's cooler, you can drink more!"
If it's complex aromas you're after, Burgundy cannot be ignored. "Pinot Noir has without any doubt the widest spectrum of aromas in wine production," said Pierre-Henry Gagey, the dashing president of Louis Jadot, going on to explain his dislike of the kind of fruit and nut descriptions people such as your correspondent use to describe fine wines. "Great wines are not black and white. And you have to be prepared for a disappointment now and again, because the producers have to take risks. The result may be a stunning wine in a very average year, or vice versa."
Both Gagey and his winemaker Jacques Lardiere radiate such sizzling energy that I've wondered more than once whether there's some magic ingredient in Jadot wines. The truth is more prosaic. Always reliable, they just keep getting better and better. Owned since the mid-1980s by Kobrand, its American distributors, the house of Louis Jadot has invested heavily, both in top quality vineyards and in a revolutionary new winery. Here, in a structure like a giant wigwam with a hundred vats arranged in concentric circles, small parcels of grapes can be vinified separately to make the 140 wines in the portfolio.
All very fine, but what about Burgundy's bruising prices? Gagey takes criticism on the chin. "It has been a very good time for our wines - maybe a bit too good," he said, mentioning how millennium madness and skyrocketing demand from Japan have pushed Burgundy prices up. When he reported that grape prices in Gevrey were 70 per cent higher in 1997 than in 1996, there were gasps - of shock mixed with relief that Jadot and many other producers have tried to hold the line on prices as best they can. Take comfort. "They will go down again, for sure, in a year or two."
His special tip for wine fans? "I always advise people to buy Burgundy in cases of at least six bottles, because when you have a wonderful bottle the greatest pleasure is to know there are five more waiting for you." Ah, a man after my own heart. The more so because, although Gagey heads up an extraordinarily successful company, he's a passionate wine buff first and a businessman second, with no marketing jargon, no accounting claptrap. He doesn't even do annual forecasts, he claims - news that is as refreshing as a glass of decent Chablis.
The fortunes of that other familiar old Burgundy house, Bouchard Pere et Fils, have revived since it was bought in 1995 by champagne producer Joseph Henriot. The new owner made headlines by tasting his way through the company cellars, turning up his nose and writing off six million francs' worth of stock. But since then he has been quietly making other improvements - investing in new equipment, new oak barrels and above all, increasing the company's stake in grand cru and premier cru vineyards. The results are striking.
"People had forgotten about Bouchard Pere et Fils," says export manager Catherine Leonard. "But now we are back in the news - back at the top." It's still early days, but already in assessments of the past couple of vintages by leading experts (including America's Robert Parker and Michel Bettane of La Revue du Vin de France, the best wines of Bouchard Pere et Fils have been earning lavish praise.
And so they should, to judge by the bottles poured at Catherine Leonard's fascinating workshop on the wines of Beaune - four reds and two of the less frequently encountered whites, all complex and built to last. My favourite was the Beaune-Greves Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus 1995 (see below) - both for its exquisite elegance and its name. "The Carmelite nuns who owned the vineyard long ago thought it was so soft," Catherine Leonard chuckled, "that it was like the baby Jesus going down their throats."