French Wines

France offers some excellent wine, both red and white. French Wine is produced in many regions throughout France, and in large quantities; as much as 8 billion bottles per year.

France has one of the largest vineyard areas, second only to Spain, and is the world’s largest producer. French wine can be traced back to the sixth century BC; the wines produced today range from expensive high end wines sold internationally to modest wines sold only in France.

France is home to many different grape varieties, like Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. Many of these grapes originated in France and are now grown all over the world, many well known wine making practices and styles also originated in France.

Good quality French wine is reasonably priced, France has traditionally been the largest consumer of its own wine, but this has slowly been dropping over the past forty years, in the 90s the amount of wine consumed by the French dropped by twenty percent.

French wine producers now rely heavily on foreign buyers, but consumption in other leading wine countries has also been dropping, like in Italy and Spain.

France offers fair prices on their wines to help encourage sales, but prices have recently been increasing due to economic downturn.

The quality of French wine is brilliant, especially if you know which bottles to buy. They are all worth a try at some point or another as the kind of wine you buy in UK supermarkets doesn’t really compare to a good import from France.