READ the article.

Checking in with SDB, I see that he criticizes an article on the recently sluggish sales of French wines in the United States. The article's basic thrust is that American wine-drinking habits, which tend to focus on varietal wines (i.e., wines made from specific types of grapes, like Chardonnay) lead them away from wines that are branded by the region from which they spring (like Bordeaux). Fair enough; makes sense to me, even from my casual following of the wine biz. There's been a great deal of focus on wines from places like Australia and from domestic producers beyond Napa Valley (some of which are in my own backyard, here in New York State).

But that's not what annoys SDB. He says this:

The article doesn't contain any acknowledgement that some of the decline might be due to political backlash by ordinary Americans. It is apparently inconceivable that some American wine-drinkers might be consciously boycotting French wine because of France's foreign policy.

Evidently he missed this bit from the article:

Part of the decline can be attributed to the surging euro, which has jumped from 84 cents to a high of USD 1.29 over the past three years, and anti-French sentiment stemming from the fallout over the US-led invasion of Iraq. (Emphasis added)

How SDB missed this is beyond me, since he cites the first clause of this graf (the bit about the euro), and then goes right on to mentioning the branding bit, which seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable approach for the wine producers, given recent shifts in the wine market apart from the political angles.

UPDATE: In the middle of this "grab bag" post, SDB admits either error or the possibility that the clause I highlight above was added after he initially read the article. Fair enough; either could certainly be the case.

I would also add that it wouldn't strike me as odd if the article actually did make no mention whatsoever of any politically-motivated boycotting of French wine, since the article is reporting on the proceedings of a wine merchant's expo. It seems to me that winemakers would very likely conclude that there is very little they can do to overcome any politically-motivated boycotting (what would they do? Invade Iraq on their own?), and thus it seems perfectly reasonable for them to focus on changes they can make to hopefully increase their sales again. In this case, examining American wine-drinking habits and then adjusting their own practices to more closely match them makes sense. They can't do anything about the Euro, and they can't do anything about France being on the "shit-list" of a great deal of Americans. They can do something about their branding. Now, whether that constitutes an example of the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic is a matter for debate, but not this one.