Binge drinking and its tragic consequences are very much in the mind of French politicians and health specialists. Unfortunately in order to reduce binge drinking, French authorities target the wine industry more than the spirits industry. Studies show clearly that young people get drunk in night clubs on cocktails based on spirits and not on wine.

A recent report on the prevention of binge drinking and alcohol related problems among the young people show that education is the best prevention. We already talked about the various possible opinions on the delicate subject of wine education: is it better to let young people taste a drop of wine in their early age like it is still done in many French families where wine is part of the lifestyle? Or is it better to just forbid alcohol in any form until adulthood? The debate is till going on and there is no certain answer.

That’s why a report signed by Prof. Jean-Robert Pitte, former President of the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris and Jean-Pierre Coffe is rather interesting. The report  states clearly universities should serve wine in their restaurants and educate students on wine. Both men recommend that wine tastings be organized in universities and university restaurants. The proposal makes sense if one takes into account that students from international business schools, such as our HEC or INSEAD, have wine tasting clubs open to their students.  Members of those clubs organize tastings and events with wine professionals. Wine is then considered as a cultural product, part of a highly elegant lifestyle. We are very far from binge drinking! The Ministry of Education, Valerie Pecresse, already ruled out the opportunity.

What’s good? What’s wrong? Education is the key to a better understanding of cultural values. Wine is part of the history of most European countries. Young people should be introduced to wine during their studies.  The wine industry, with its long history and economical importance in our troubled times, is not explained in any geography or history course. What’s wrong with our educational system?

According to Adam Lechmere from decanter.com, a Spanish children’s book, El Estornino Saturnino en la Tierra del Vino (The Gloomy Starling in Wine Country) by Judith Sáenz de Tejada won the prize for best illustrated wine publication at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2009, which took place in Paris on July 1st, 2009.

Without even reading the book, I feel very happy for Spanish children whose wine culture is explained to them with care and certainly talent. It will be a long time before French children can have access to such a book. Spain understood the need to promote the wine industry as part of their cultural heritage. France is on its way to destroy one of its cultural gems as well as a very important economic resource.

Indeed France is depicting wine as evil – it must be part of our axis of evil of sad memory! Vineyards are part of our landscapes like wine is an important component of our lifestyle. In spite of that, French children are taught that wine and any alcohol beverages will lead to alcoholism, drunk driving, cancer and tragedy. They’re not taught the beauty of the wine countries, how wine is made and the true values of wine as a cultural product.

The good side of this story is that Judith Saenz de Tejada’s book was awarded in France by a French institution. The first step towards the recognition of the true value of wine? Let’s hope this book will be translated in French for the good of our children and of their education.

France is currently debating a law on how to save its health coverage system and prevent various costly diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular accidents and so on. First culprit: wine consumption. I suppose drinking a glass of whiskey a day or a glass of vodka is much better for your health!

Whatever the culprit or the intentions of the government behind this targeting of the wine industry, I suspect France doesn’t to find the right answer to the problem of binge drinking among young people. The answer is called: education. In countries where drinking wine is not denounced as a crime, alcoholism decreased while wine consumption increased. Weird? Not so much! Education was the key word. Young children learned how wine was made, how it was part of their history, their culture and their traditions, that it was part of a high quality lifestyle. Grown up, they knew to choose wine, consume it with moderation and appreciate it for what it was: the result of a difficult work done by people dedicated to a high quality product.

This is so true that some French people are at the origin of very original and innovative ideas. The small but rising Chaors appellation is one of them. Its Marketing Director, Jeremy Arnaud, launched last year the Malbec Academy in partnership for the Wine MBA program of the Dijon Business School, under the direction of Pr. Joëlle Brouard. Each year, the students spend a week in Cahors to get both a theoretical and practical knowledge of the Cahors region and wines: in the morning, they follow seminars on the international strategy of the Cahors appellation and brainstorm with the speakers on various subjects. In the afternoon, they visit properties and meet producers and negociants. To complete this “splash course”, each student is invited to spend the week with the family of a producer or a negociant.

The program takes place from March 23rd to March 27th in Cahors. I’ll be one of the keynote speakers among many others: Jérémy Arnaud, Marketing Director of the Cahors Appellation (UIVC), Pr. Joëlle Brouard and Pr. Jean-Guillaume Ditter, authors of a comparative study on Cahors and Chablis; the journalist Jérôme Baudouin for his comparative study on Cahors and Australia, Pr. Valérie Olvier on agricultural management; Pr. Jean-Christian Tulet author of a documentary on Cahors wines; Franck Lederer, Financial Director of the Taillan Group, to mention only a few.

This initiative shows how education and not repression is the best way to answer the problem.

Wendy Narby is one of the best representatives of the links between Britain and Bordeaux. She moved to Bordeaux about 20 years ago and is now one of the best specialists of the Bordeaux wines, acting as a consultant, a teacher and a guide. She came to France in the ’80s to study wine marketing and got her master from a school of the ESSEC Group in Paris. Her dissertation was on “Marketing Bordeaux wine” – what a surprise! In 1989, she married Hamilton Narby, an English speaking Canadian from Montreal and a negotiant in Bordeaux. Hamilton convinced her to move to Bordeaux – “not a hard sell”, said Wendy with a smile.

I met Wendy a few months ago and I liked her warm and outgoing personality as much as her passion for Bordeaux, wine, food and everything good in life. I discovered her professional talent when she presented to a group of Napa Valley winemakers invited to Bordeaux the industry of the region. She mentioned the “innovative” aspect of the Bordeaux wine industry – to the surprise of her American listeners who pictured Bordeaux as the epitome of conservatism. She very nicely agreed to answer a few questions on this topic.

What makes Bordeaux “innovative” in the wine business?

I think it used to be conservative and for many properties it is perhaps an image they choose to cultivate but, for the vast majority, it is just no longer the case. Examples – look around some of the cellars, we have some of the most modern cellars using the very latest wine making techniques. Of course, Bordeaux is all about the place (terroir) but technique is nothing new. Blending but has always been a keystone of what is Bordeaux and if that is not a technique…!

Haut-Brion was one of the first properties to have stainless steel tanks as early as the 60′s and the innovations have been coming on ever since. One major reason I believe is the influence of the Institut d’Oenologie (Enology Institute) here, not just for the R&D going on there but for the rapid dissemination of this information from the institute to the growers and wine makers via the structure of consultants and through the role of the negociants that often get such criticism commercially but play a major role in many cases in advising their suppliers – growers – and offering them expertise that they would not normally have access to. They are also a very innovative force as they are in direct and constant contact with the market place which, for smaller growers, is very difficult, and they can relay this market information and translate it into practical wine making, packaging and marketing advice.

How do you foresee the future of the Bordeaux wines on the international markets? I’m referring mostly to the estates that are not part of the Grand Cru system. How could they manage to fight competition and innovate?

I see many young wine makers and managers at the properties I visit in the region. These young people are highly trained individuals either in oenology or in business or both! They speak foreign languages and have usually spent a period wine making or working in other wine regions throughout the world. They are bringing this experience and this market knowledge back home.

As a consequence they are making wines, especially in the ‘Everyday’ price range that are not just extremely good value for money but of consistent quality (often a criticism of Bordeaux with the vintage effect that accompanies our climate), of a style that suits the market for their price point and attractively packaged. They are also aware that making a fine wine is not enough. They travel and meet the customer either opening their cellars and their homes to visitors – hence, the increasing number of tasting rooms and chambres d’hôte (B&B) in the Châteaux especially in the Côtes region – or getting on the market place via the negociants, through initiatives like Everyday Bordeaux or in wine shows where they have direct contact with their final customers.

I also think that these wine makers show a side to Bordeaux that is uncomplicated and I believe that education as well as wine tourism is the key to reassuring people that choosing Bordeaux from a supermarket shelve or from a restaurant wine list is not automatically an expensive or an intimidating choice – Education is the key. The CIVB (Bordeaux Wine Council) via its wine school ‘l’Ecole du Vin de Bordeaux’ has betted on this by training 145 international wine educators about Bordeaux; its innovations and accessibility and also by partnering with 19 wine schools internationally to spread this message – being very aware that not everyone who is interested in Bordeaux can get here to learn about it. Since 1990, over 100,000 people worldwide have followed the Bordeaux Wine School programmes: amateurs, distributors and educators. As of 2007, 14 000 professionals had benefited from these training programs. Education is definitely a key.

Technical innovations in wine making and blending, a new generation and a new style of Bordeaux producers, education are indeed the keys to the new world of Bordeaux wines. Wendy Narby will be our guest on our live radio show, the new wine consumer, on March 17th. She’ll give us more details on this topic and you’ll have a taste of her warm personaility and passion for life and wine.

Tomorrow our live radio show, newwineconsumer.com, will be on wine education. We already talked about educating the parents and educating children on wine. We would like to extend the discussion to a broader prospect: educating through wine tasting groups, professional education, wine MBAs and Masters Programs and whatever ways wine education is spreading.

There are also some basic questions we didn’t answer yet: what is the importance of consumers’ magazines, such as Wine and Food, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator? Are they an education tool or just a commercial enterprise? Are wine critics part of the educating system? What is the point rating system’s importance?

Please join our conference at 9:00 am pacific time by calling (724) 444-7444 and then entering these digits: 11888# 1#.

Binge drinking, underage drinking, drunk driving are topics making the news a lot in the beginning of this summer. Is it because the season makes everybody more relaxed and willing to have a drink to fight the heat of the season? I don’t know, but whatever the reason I read a lot about this important topic. It comes back to educating young people on wine, alcohol and, very interestingly, their parents, as a recent initiative showed.

Beam Global Spirits & Wine, Inc. partnered with the Century Council’s educational campaign, “Girl Talk.” The Century Council, a not-for-profit organization funded by distillers and dedicated to fighting drunk driving and underage drinking, held two “Girl Talk” initiatives in the month of June 2008 to help mothers start the dialog with their teenage daughters about the dangers of underage drinking. A recent survey by The Century Council revealed that nearly half of all mothers think underage drinking is acceptable under some circumstances. The survey found also that mothers of teenage daughters underestimate the occurrence of underage drinking among their own daughters and misjudge the seriousness of the issue. The Council created a website to encourage the conversation, between mothers and daughters on underage drinking, as well as the website to inform their daughters on the danger of drinking.

The partnership of Beam Global Spirits & Wine with this initiative is in the line of the group’s strategy of preventing over drinking, drunk driving and underage drinking through its drink smart® responsibility platform.

This initiative is quite welcome as a lot of parents are occasional drinkers and might not have the understanding that wine and alcohol are cultural products, needing to be consumed with moderation and requiring the exercise of a better judgment. This program should be developed in many countries where underage drinking is very often the consequence of the lack of awareness and education of the parents on wine and alcohol.

photo: LondonLooks

Today I just heard that two of my friends of OpenWineConsortium were new parents. Congratulations are in order and I send them heartily and happily!

This happy event started me thinking on educating children and young ones about wine, wine making and vines. It is a recurrent theme around wine lovers and professionals. There was a very interesting thread in Eric Asimov’s blog, “The Pour”, a few weeks ago and it generated a LOT of comments. Instead of debating on how appropriate it is to have children have a drop or a taste of wine or champagne at the family table, I’d like to share with you some other ideas – as a wine educator.

Wine is not only about drinking: it is also about culture, agriculture, nature and technology. Imagine you’re a little kid born and raised in a major city: what would you know about vines, seasons, the weather influencing the maturing of the grapes, grapes themselves? Not much, I assume! Imagine you’re a little kid born and raised in the countryside far away from vineyards: you wouldn’t know much more than your city friend. I’d like to reconcile every kid wherever they come from and have them share what is at the heart of the wine industry: teach them what vines are about, how they’re tended by people all year around, how they’re harvested and transformed over weeks and/or months to become our precious wine. I’d like to tell them you can make wine by just following nature’s course or adding technology. I’d like to walk them in vineyards and wineries. I’d like to have them talk to grape growers, wine makers and wine lovers of different countries and cultural backgrounds. I’d like to let them discover that wine, like music, is a great link between people, wherever they come from. I’d like them to understand that wine is a product of civilization and a sign of culture common to many – worldwide.

How could this translate in reality? Every country should have a national program to teach kids about wine and food. But let’s start small, local: my friends, the Greek Women in Wine, are building a program, with their own Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Education, to teach children about vines, agriculture and grapes. Let’s all follow their example!