French winemaker whose faults are illegal in his home country

The winemaker Maxim Shaput will be arrested if he tries to sell two of his latest wines in his native France.

“There will probably be outrage about these wines in France and that would be something nice,” he says. “Sometimes you have to be provocative to stimulate change.”

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

According to the legislation of both France and the European Union, it is forbidden to make wine, which combines EU and outside the EU fruits. Especially in France, authorities take such things very seriously.

The French wine industry has a known word called “Terroir”, which is applied to all environmental factors that affect the vineyards growing in the vineyard, such as soil, climate and altitude. As a result, the wines from a particular place are of the greatest respect.

Add a strict name or classification system for France's wine regions and the thought of mixing French and Australian wine to create a global hybrid, many French wine lovers will horrify.

Still, Maxim did just that and it's all thanks to one word – Brexit.

While he cannot sell the two wines in the EU, he can do so in the United Kingdom after London should no longer follow the rules of food and drinks set by Brussels.

Maxime has created the blame in partnership with the British online retailer The Wine Society, where they are called Hemisphes Red and Hemipsphers White. The red is made of grape cheese or shiraz, as they call it in Australia, while white is a mixture of varieties of Marsan and Vione.

The components of Australian red and white wine are sent in bulk to the United Kingdom, where they are mixed with wine from the regions of North Rhone and Rusian of France before bottling.

Maxim, who works for the famous Chapoutiier winery based in Rhone, says that although he respects France's focus on the terroir, there must be room to sell global mixtures.

“Shaput has been making wine for more than 200 years, highly oriented towards terroir and biodynamic,” he says. “But more and more people are turning their backs on French wines because they do not understand the complex rules of name.

“We need to adapt to users and make the blame more accessible, for which international mixtures can help. Perhaps EU legislation will change. In addition, it is more environmentally friendly to carry wine from Australia to Europe in the staffing, as you do not have the weight of all glass bottles. “

Another wine company that now produces wines by combining grapes from two continents is the Australian company Penfolds. It sells red wines made by both Australian and California grapes, as well as others who mix Australian and French grapes. Again, they cannot be sold in the EU, but they can in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and elsewhere.

Penfolds calls these blends “wine in the world” and says that they “have a otherness that can best be described as secular.” Whatever that means.

Not surprisingly, some more traditional winemakers do not support this development. One such person is Jas Swan, an independent wine producer based in Germany.

Although mixed from two continents of Chapoutiier and Penfolds are made carefully of quality grapes and are evaluated accordingly, it is afraid that if the trend grows, it will mean a lot more cheap, low quality wine to be sold.

“I believe that these types of wines would not be left of any terroir, even before leaving their continent,” she says. “These wines would only have machine work, heavy additives to keep them clean, and are made to be easy to drink from the tables.

“Why can't users be more demanding? Consuction is crazy.”

Peter Richards, who has the highest worldwide qualification in the wine industry, the Master of Wine (MW), is also laughing. “The idea of ​​mixing wine in different countries is not something I find scandalous in itself,” he says. “My worry is more that it is about creating a novelty because of the novelty itself.”

His wife, Susie Barry, who is also a MW, adds: “I remain convinced that wine made by mixing grapes from different countries can be great in taste.”

In contrast, the wine writer Jamie Good says that the development of wine from two continents “is actually a pretty funny idea.”

“If the wines are good and make well by good vineyards – not just a trick, mixing cheap wines and then a huge margin of wine – then this is quite interesting.

“The fundamental foundation for good wine is the idea of ​​a terroir – that the wines come from a place and their taste expresses this place in a unique way. But not all wines have to be terror wines and there is room for guilt like this.

“In some respects, many skills are needed to mix the right wines together to create something interesting coming from so many different places.”

Pierre Mansour, the leader of the purchase of The Wine Society, says that he and his colleagues have come up with the idea of ​​creating two wines made from grapes from different continents, as part of the company's 150th birthday.

“We were thinking about the future of wine and wanted to do something innovative. In the end, we decided that an area of ​​innovation was the mixing, the creation of wine that could mitigate the impact of climate change on a particular country.

“And from the carbon footprint that is not visible, it is more environmentally friendly to carry wine in bulk from Australia to the United Kingdom. But at the same time, we expected the “terrorists” to say “retention, this is fundamental against the French principle of wine”.

“So we turned to Shaput, thinking that they could tell us,” Are you crazy, how dare you offend us, “but they were great. They were really enthusiastic. “