PASCAL RENAUDAT is the founder of the most sacrilegious concept imaginable to any Gallic purist — a French wine company that unashamedly imitates the New World.

Opéra Vins et Spiritueux (OVS) aims to win back drinkers in France’s biggest export markets, and notably in Britain, where it introduced its wines this week. If M Renaudat is right, his Chamarré range will be one of the most popular in British supermarkets within three years, rivalling the likes of Jacob’s Creek and Hardys. If not, critics will line up to attack him for flouting some of the most cherished beliefs of French viticulture.

For example, he describes Chamarré as a brand — a dirty word in the refined world of châteaux, domaines and vignobles. Brands are for tacky commerce, not the noble fruit of the French terroir.

More outrageous still, he developed and named his wines after a long series of consumer tests, thus ignoring the golden rule that “good taste” is an intrinsic, unchanging — and French — concept.

M Renaudat, 52, made a fortune as a wine distributor in France and then followed his father and brother into farming. But he was soon back in an attempt to prove that his compatriots had no one but themselves to blame for a fall in their global market share from 70 per cent to 40 per cent in the past decade. “I got fed up with reading that the difficulties of French wine were always the fault of everyone else — of the Government, of the New World, of supermarkets. The real problem is the way French wine is organised.”

In a country with tens of thousands of vineyards, producers lack the clout to compete with the likes of the giant US drinks group Constellation Brands, he says. They are unable to advertise or win supermarket shelf space. And for the average shopper they are bewilderingly complex. “Frankly, if you manage to buy French wine in the UK you deserve a medal,” Pierre Courbon, the marketing director of OVS, said.

M Renaudat’s answer was to turn French wine-making on its head, creating a brand that is backed by a substantial budget so that he can produce the 12 millon bottles that he hopes to be selling in Britain every year by 2009. Chamarré, priced between £5 and £7.50, is sold under a heavily researched label in bottles adorned by a trademark butterfly.

M Renaudat persuaded six of the largest French wine cooperatives to put aside their rivalry. They have bought shares in OVS and are supplying it with their wine, which Renaud Rosari, his winemaker, mixes to form a populist range.

With French wine sales in Britain falling to £761 million last year, M Renaudat convinced them that the sort of easy-to-drink product that has proved successful in California and Australia would meet with similar fortune in France. And woe betide him if he is wrong.

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