The bottom has dropped out of French alcoholic beverage exports – except for vodka.  Wait a second.  Since when does France produce vodka?  Isn’t that some proletarian beverage from further east in Europe?  Nope.

Bacardi’s Grey Goose vodka is made in France, and makes up virtually all of France’s vodka exports.  Running counter to normal recession trends, French vodka exports rose 13.7% in 2009 to $324 million.  And 70% of that was sold to the United States.  To put this in perspective, total French exports of wine and spirits plunged 17% to $10.5 billion.  That makes vodka, quite literally, a drop in the bucket.  But how did Bacardi get the job done?  I don’t drink vodka, but I have never noticed a hint in Bacardi’s ads that Grey Goose is French.  Any of you readers have an idea of how they did it?

Pinot Noir - but what gets into your bottle?

U.S. imports of French wines tumbled 22.7% last year to a dispiriting $1.8 billion.  And their prospects aren’t helped by a court decision last week that convicted a dozen wine growers and merchants of defrauding American buyers.  A French court in Carcassonne (one of my favorite places) found that French firms had duped E. & J. Gallo Winery (and others, as yet unnamed) into buying cheap plonk, thinking it was good pinot noir from the Languedoc.  (I’ve had some great wines in the Languedoc, but this apparently was not the good stuff.)  The perpetrators succeeded in passing off cheaper merlot and syrah as pinot noir for two years, beginning early in 2006.  Gallo says it is no longer selling any of the fake pinot, but they can’t vouch for bottles still on retail shelves.  Look out for Gallo’s “Red Bicyclette” pinot noir.  It may not be what you think.

The incentive for the French companies was immense.  The judge said they made $9.8 million from the scam.  The big winners (now losers) were respected firms: Ducasse harvested $5 million and Gallo’s supplier, Sieur d’Arques, took them for a $1.8 million bicyclette ride.  A French fraud squad broke the case when they audited Ducasse’s books and found the firm had been buying “pinot noir” at about half the market price.