A grumpy Gallic-wine-hating reader saw fit to complain three times last month about my “mercilessly plugging the French stuff to the exclusion of the rest of the world”. He was particularly incensed that 19 out of 25 Top 100 sub-£8 wines came from France, and 14 won through under £12 and under £20. Didn’t I know that, “France no longer produces the best wines in the world?” Well no, actually. France, for all its failings (and many have been aired here), continues to set the standards for global fine wine production. After the finest fizz in the world? Then you will have to splash out on limited production, necessarily costly prestige champagne. Want to drink the greatest red wines on earth? Step forward the top and now statospherically expensive vintages of Bordeaux and Burgundy. And if you are keen to taste unique and thankfully still relatively reasonably priced wines that nowhere else in the world can emulate, from bone-dry, minerally chablis in cool, northern Burgundy, to black-as-night, seductively syrah-spiced hermitage in the hot terraced south, then France reigns supreme.

Vintages obviously play a part in Gallic supremacy. 2005 was a great year virtually everywhere in France, so lots of Gallic charmers from this vintage dominated The Times Top 100. Cooler, damper 2006 wasn’t in the same sunny league as 2005, but lots of suprisingly good wines were made, with the ’06 Rhônes trumping the previous year – and some say the same for white burgundy. No one would claim that the cold, wet 2007 harvest, saved by an Indian summer, is anywhere near as good as 2006. Yet the perky, fresh as a daisy, dry ’07 French whites that have just arrived taste pretty darned good. All of which explains the plethora of ’05 and ’06 reds and ’07 whites that popped up this summer.

Where France falls down, owing to a strong euro and weak sterling, is in the sub-£6 section, where much of the rest of the world’s wines present much better value for money. The New World in particular triumphed sub-£6, with Chile and Australia looking strong, plus the odd Kiwi white and Cape and Argentinian red. At the other end of the price spectrum, where France usually hogs the Top 100 limelight to the exclusion of everywhere else, the New World held its own for the first time. There was a quartet of Aussie wines from superior estates with distinguished single-vineyard sites, and an outstanding Central Otago pinot noir that challenged Burgundy. One step down in the under £12s, and it was the same, a quartet of Aussie regional and varietal stars including a brilliant Clare Valley riesling and Barossa cabernet, while New Zealand triumphed with a fine pinot noir from Martinborough, this variety’s first Kiwi home.

The golden age of wine indeed. Someone just needs to tell my correspondent.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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