ITALY VS FRANCE: "WE ARE BETTER ON HIGH TIER WINES AND ITALY IS BETTER ON MID TIER. BUT WE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE ON MANY ISSUES", SAYS SERGE DUBOIS, PRESIDENT OF UNION INTERNATIONALE DES OENOLOGUES

In the wine world Italy and France are rivals “par excellence”: Italy is the leader in exports in quantity and France is the leader in value. But today, many issues find us on the same side of the fence, as Serge Dubois, president of the Union Internationale des Oenologues told WineNews, "in the Old World, therefore France and Italy, winemaking is very different than in the new producing countries like the United States: our countries have centuries of history and a love for wine that both producers and enologists share and respect. On the other side of the Atlantic, instead, especially in the multinational companies, winemakers are first and foremost focused on earnings”.
We are on the same side in the fight against the liberalization of planting rights, "just like Italy, producers here are united against liberalization”. But, for one thing that unites us, another divides us: the age-old question of who is "the best" and the president of French Oenologists says, “It is Italy. France is the leader for top tier wines, Champagne, the great Bordeaux, Burgundy, which, however, account for 2-3% of production. Italian wine is more common even in Quebec, a former French colony. There is however a structural problem: "Italian companies are on the average very small, unlike the French that cover 15-20 acres, and they do not produce only wine, but also other products, which can often translate to a resistance to change”.

This problem, however, will not stop the conquest abroad, "the great Italian wines are well known now, it will still take some time to reach the great French wines, but the road is paved and it is the right one to follow."

This is an extraordinary endorsement for Italian wine, and if the final game of the 2012 European Soccer Cup were between Italy and France, “it would be a matter of the heart, to be faced with a choice of Barolo, Ripasso or Supertuscan”.