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Kramer’s Letter to France

Famed wine critic Matt Kramer writes:

You’re getting cranky. The world is changing, and far from leading the charge -- and the change -- you’re insisting that everyone else is at fault.

Remember your headline-making tantrum in 2001 via the French Ministry of Agriculture? “Until recent years, wine was with us,” you said. “We were the center, the unavoidable reference point. Today, the barbarians are at our gates: Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Chile, Argentina, South Africa.”

Sure, the barbarian bit was meant to be ironic. But you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know that beneath the irony is a seething resentment. It’s an old story: Others are doing this to you.

Well, it’s not so. You’ve done it to yourself.

The details make for a damning indictment of France's once world-leading wine industry.