Book review: The Wine Regions of France
Michelin, The Wine Regions of France
A guide to cathedrals might seem like the logical shift toward themes for the Michelin green guides, traditionally organized by country or region. But I came across one with another theme: French wine regions.
On the whole the book offers the first time tourist a bird’s eye view. The first 70 pages provide a brisk overview of wine and France that is balanced and up-to-date enough to touch on the recent troubles of the French wine industry. In the subsequent twelve regional sections, each has a regional map with several itineraries laid out in typical Michelin style. Practical information ranges from select hotels and restaurants to good shops for wine and other regional products in the main towns.
However the major drawback is that the guide’s group author backs down from providing a star-ranking for the wine producers themselves. Michelin has no qualms about rating chefs, hotels, cathedrals, museums, indeed entire towns and villages in its other guides yet is unable to rate wine producers here either for the quality of their wines or the tourist appeal of their properties. Since many visits to wine country tend to be for a weekend or combined with other attractions in the area, such a ranking would provide the harried traveler a useful thumbnail sketch of the top wineries in the area. Suggesting a fun big name to visit as well as an independent grower that few might have heard of would be helpful way for a tourist to balance an afternoon. In Champagne, for example, why not offset the slick tour at Moet with a visit to Jacques Selosse whose extraordinary champagnes are not exported to the US.
Although it is a book of all wine producing regions of France, the tourist is probably only likely to visit one region. Thus the book must be evaluated on the strength of the regional coverage. It’s a pity then that the regional sections are too thin with too much material recycled from the regional green guide and not enough opinion and information satisfy the wine tourist. The maps indicate only a few winery locations among the other sites and hikes. While the unstarred winery blurbs do provide useful contact info and some visitor hours, their descriptions are often bland and not enough for the tourist to know what’s worth visiting.
Even if they pull their punches by not giving star reviews, that’s not the case here. I give the book one star, or “worth a browse.” In the end this book resembles Michelin’s thin rival guide, Zagat, since it is mostly useful for the contact information and hours (when correct).
tags: wine | wine travel | France | Michelin guide
On August 27th, 2006 at 10:02 pm ,Tedo wrote:
Doc,
I know I would have appreciated a guide like the one you suggested. During my recent visit to Italy I realized the difficulty in touring some wineries there, and my girlfriend who is living in Europe now, had numerous issues when trying to visit some Chateau’s in France. I knew of some based on the wines I had tasted. However both of us didn’t have a lot of luck, because even knowing the vintners and wines you never know which will be friendly and are set up for tours and tastings. A guide that not only gives contact information but notes which are good for tours and tastings would be extremely helpful.