After the widely reported nuclear accident, the wine here, Coteaux du Tricastin, was inextricably associated with the plant and with a vaguely defined danger of contamination. Prices plummeted and merchants stayed away. Wine stewards erased the cursed name from their lists in restaurants around the country. Leftover bottles of Coteaux du Tricastin were going for a little over a euro, or $1.29 at today’s values, in Paris supermarkets.
Tricastin, the vintners had to admit, had come to mean radioactive. The wine no longer evoked lavender and truffle but smokestacks and nasty chemicals. Although as pleasant as ever and scientifically proven to be unaffected, it was forever going to be shunned as dangerous to the health as long as it had that name on the label.
Desperate, the Tricastin vintners did something never before tried since France began classifying wine by its place of origin: They changed their region’s name. Coteaux du Tricastin became Grignan-les-Adhemar, eliminating the dreaded association with the nuclear plant, which is near Pierrelatte, about 15 miles to the west of Grignan.
And a wine by any other name, it turned out, was not the same at all. In the two seasons since the name change was granted, the winemakers of Grignan-les-Adhemar have found a second wind.
Prices have gone back up to $85 to $110 a hectoliter (100 liters) in bulk and $5 to $7 a bottle, about normal for an unpretentious Rhone Valley appellation. Merchants who come calling have stopped asking about the nuclear accident at Pierrelatte and inquire instead about the Renaissance chateau at Grignan that was the last residence of the Marquise de Sevigne, the famed letter writer, or whether the dogs are turning up a lot of truffles in surrounding oak groves.
“We have started to see the light again,” said Henri Bour, who heads the local wine syndicate and whose several domaines are the region’s largest producer with 320,000 bottles a year. “We feel we have been reborn.”
Jean-Luc Monteillet, whose Domaine de Montine depends heavily on direct sales to tourists who walk in after visiting the chateau, said he is delighted that nobody brings up the nuclear plant anymore. When a minor explosion occurred in a generator at the Tricastin plant in July, for instance, no one made the connection with Grignan-les-Adhemar wine.
“It’s over,” Monteillet said, smiling and pouring out samples of his creations.
A marketing move
A wine’s appellation, or the name of its place of origin, is granted only after years of investigation by the Agriculture Ministry’s National Institute of Origin and Quality; the right to put an appellation on a label has often been a quest for lesser wines eager to join the ranks of more prestigious — and more lucrative — neighbors.
Loading...
Comments