Why do the French always say non?

No-one could love good French wine more than I do, and it’s precisely because of this that the French themselves are driving me to distraction.

The threat of competition from wine producers outside France has been so obvious for so long – ever since the famous Gault Millau California v France tasting organised by Steven Spurrier in Paris in 1976 – that it’s quite extraordinary that French wine producers themselves are only just waking up to it.

And the worst thing of all, the very worst, is that instead of responding by working out what they need to do differently...