Anthony Rose: A belated response to the upstarts' challenge

(AFP/ GETTY IMAGES)

The extravagant prices currently being asked for the 2009 bordeaux vintage obscure an unpalatable truth: that the New World has stolen a march on France in recent years thanks to a combination of consistent quality, clever branding and dynamic marketing.

At the highest level of quality, French wine has little to fear from the New World, but the middle and lower tiers, vin de pays and vin de table in particular, have seemed doomed by an inability to clamber out of a slough of despond of their own making. Goaded into action by the reforming European agricultural commissioner, Mariann Fischer-Boel, France has at long last come up with a plan to respond to customer demand for better value, improved taste and less obfuscation.

The new "Vin de France" category is a move towards greater flexibility across the board in its production techniques and better communication in its marketing. A way, in other words of creating better value brands. How so? First of all, wines labelled Vin de France can focus on the taste of the wine for the first time by stating the grape variety or varieties and the vintage on the front label. At the same time French wine companies can now blend wines from across the country's many varied wine regions to create a consistent brand.

It's an obvious, yet innovative step with the long-term aim of enabling French wine to compete with its New World counterparts. Some see this as the thin end of an industrial wine wedge, but there's no reason why this should be the case. French wine at whatever level will remain, as it always has been, an agricultural product subject to the vagaries of vintage variation and human whim.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I was invited last month to lead a panel of journalists and wine trade specialists in the inaugural tasting of over 100 new Vins de France. Although it's early days as yet, the results indicated that these were not wines dumped into a vin de table poubelle. They showed that there's a growing number of forward-thinking producers committed to improving the consistency of their wines and communicating this to consumers.

The sauvignon trophy-winning 2009 Kiwi Cuvée Sauvignon Blanc, for instance, £5.97, Asda, is a case in point, a delightfully refreshing, gooseberryish Loire-meets-New Zealand style. The new rules don't mean that customers will turn away in their droves from the New World and back to France for value, but at least our palette of options will be broader.

The writer is The Independent's wine critic