It saddens me to say that Americans, as wine drinkers, have been bamboozled. Lied to. Led astray. One would be pressed to think of a bottle of wine that can be bought in the U.S. for under $10 that not only A. taste good, but B. leaves you without a trace of a headache or other nagging symptoms that denote a poor quality wine. In the realm of imported French wine, trying to find one under $20 is very difficult. So consequently, as Americans we are trained to believe that you have to not only pay dearly to drink well, but that you must have some sort of training to do so. We did a test while in Paris. We purposely tried to purchase a bottle of undrinkable wine. Most were under 3 euros and none were over 5, all chosen at random. I am happy to report that we did not succeed. All of them were very pleasant tasting, with varying degrees of greatness of course. What is imported and sold to wine drinkers in the U.S. is nothing close to what the French drink themselves, at a fraction of the cost.




