French wines are much more complex than Napa wines...

All true, but remember to take movies with a few pinches of salt.

Steven Spurrier has disowned the film. 'Nothing in it is true', he said. The Chardonnay and Cab Sauvignon in the blind tasting were being compared to basic Chablis, Buzet and Bergerac not Grands Crus.

Exaggeration of the Spurrier results has had two very bad effects.

It sent a lot of Napa wine prices to Mount Olympus for what is often quite ordinary wine. Silver Oaks Cabernet at $175.00 a bottle - be serious! - any quality Medoc, Chambertin, Super Tuscan or Clare Valley will beat it hands down at $50.00 or less. We see Alan Rickman being ridiculed for offering to pay for a tasting (VERY, VERY unusual in Europe) although Chateau Montelena now routinely charges $20 for the privilege.

As well as moving prices strongly upward, it hugely over-popularised the heavily-oaked, fruit bomb style of American wine giving rise to the now common wine bar order 'a cold white ABC, please' (Anything But Chardonnay), ironically losing American winemakers the very market that Spurrier was trying to open for them by making American wine very poor value in Europe when compared not just to French wine, but to better products from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and South America.

The tragedy of the latter is that winemakers in France are now using oak to adjust wines like Alsacian Riesling to the 'international' taste. Even in Sancerre, where you can still find a $10 wine that will conquer the world (if you visit), the oak monster is on the march.

>>The idea that quality mysteriously runs along political borders isn't particularly rational.

It does, however, run along the borders of fashion and is heavily influenced by the attractions of market volumes. And the American market is notoriously one which prefers consistency and volume to variation and quality. And suffers far more than its fair share of 'label snobbery'.