WINE ... with David Bray
Like the name, like the bottle, love the cheeky approach. Talking about The Arrogant Frog, a wine with so much appeal I have even bought it from time to time. They say it has been on sale here for six years and is doing nicely, thank you.
There's an invitation to lunch on March 24 “to celebrate 10 years of Australia’s most popular French table wine”. Something astray here: we learn that M. Jean-Claude Mas took ownership and control of the family business (est.1892) in 1999. Then “he launched the Arrogant Frog label in 2004 and over the six years, it has became one of the best-selling French wines overseas”.
He is, the press stuff tells us, “a leading exporter of French wine with one-million cases exported in 2009”.
People love the concept of these easy drinking, new-world wine from the south of France, but the quirky label featuring an arrogant frog, has more than a bit to do with the success of the launch.
They aren’t great wines, mind you, but good ones – mostly delicious and nicely priced around $11. It is a good story. A fourth-generation winemaker, M. Mas was born in what is said to be the biggest vine-growing area in the world, Languedoc. The story goes that at three years of age, during vintage, Jean-Claude ran away from his mother and walked 1.5 miles to the winery where his grandfather Raymond and father Paul were fermenting wine. And that was the start of something big.
At university he studied economics, graduated then went car and motorcycle racing for three years. In 1992, a chance meeting with one of the leading Italian winemakers, Giorgio Grai, re-established Jean-Claude's interest in wine and taught him the art of blending and creating 'wine with style'.
It was in the mid 90s, while he was a director of Domaines Virginie, a large winery in the south of France renowned for its varietal wines, that Jean-Claude decided it was time to return home to the family estate and start producing wines under his family name. Today, with a team of six winemakers and viticulturists, he runs his 120-hectare property in the Pézenas Montagnac area and a 70-hectare property in Limoux. He also sources grapes from another 450 hectares of contracted vineyards located in Limoux, Minervois, Cabardes and Coteaux du Languedoc regions in the south of France.
“The vineyard is where inspiration starts; it is where you start to draw in your mind a rough picture of the character and the personality of the wine that will be the fruit of 12 months’ work,” he says. J
ean-Claude has also been recognised as a French business leader receiving the Grand Prix de l'Entrepreneur award in 2006. In 2008, lading magazine L'Express named him in the 'New wave of French wine: 30 winemakers of tomorrow".
Along with his wife and two daughters, Jean-Claude Mas lives in a castle in Pezenas and still likes racing fast cars. The Arrogant Frog wines are made at the Mas winery Domaine Nicole, Montagnac. The Ribet White is sauvignon blanc from grapes grown near Carcassonne.
Tasters find "a brilliant twist of lemony acidity'' and in the Ribet Red a cabernet merlot blend, a mix of red and blackcurrant'.
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Still on matters French, we come to a university course in wine tasting. You may think there is very little need indeed for such a project, but it has been seriously proposed in France.
Yep, a government-commissioned report is advising French university canteens to hold wine-tasting sessions to educate the young in the virtues of moderate consumption. The Guardian quotes Jean-Pierre Coffe, a television presenter and celebrated gastronome who co-wrote the study, as advocating that universities should give young people an education in wine as well as in academia.
“Why is there sexual education and not viticultural education? You can learn wine too,” he told French radio. He believes students can be taught the joys of drinking with restraint. “Drinking is not drinking a bottle. Wine is pleasure. It’s like love. It’s the same.”
There is plenty about and M. Coffee on line though you need respectable French to get the full benefit of his thinking. The report was commissioned by Valérie Pécresse, the minister for higher education. It offers a range of recommendations on how to improve student drinking, but the proposal outlining "initiation to a moderate consumption of wine" has attracted most attention.
Jean-Robert Pitte, a former director of Paris's Sorbonne, believes lunchtime canteen tastings would provide the perfect opportunity for students to learn to drink sensibly.
“In order to avoid the total freak-out that happens every Friday night and Saturday night, we want to try to teach students a sense of responsibility, to allow them to taste wine in very moderate quantities, and to show them that it is both a pleasure, good for their health and a part of their national heritage.”
But the proposal, which comes as France faces the fact that its young people are sometimes overdoing the drink bit, has gone down less well elsewhere. Alain Rigaud, president of the national association for the prevention of alcoholism and addiction, reckons “it’s naive to think we're going to reduce binge drinking in this way”. He sees the proposal as marketing for the wine industry.
In November, the Paris city hall launched an awareness campaign aimed at the capital's 15-25-year-olds, warning of the dangers of "le binge drinking".
The Guardian reports that experts believe such heavy and rapid drinking, unfamiliar in a country that has relied on watered-down wine being given to children as an introduction, increased by about 10% between 2005 and 2008.
According to the Paris authorities, a fifth of 17-year-olds now drink at least five glasses of wine in a single sitting at least three times a month.
