Back in the early seventies, I got a big job in a big city with a big company and some reasonably big bucks. But, in order to be successful, I had to make some unreasonably big changes in my life. I had to become something I’d never been before. I had to become sophisticated. I had to forget wines with names like Zing and Ripple and Thunderbird and I had to learn new words like Burgundy, Beaujolais and Bordeaux.

Why only French words? Well in those days, French wines stood head and shoulders…or perhaps that should be neck and shoulders…in status over bottles from the rest of the world. And knowing a little about them made me seem a little more sophisticated and, yes, perhaps a little more pretentious.

Times changed. People changed. Tastes changed. Wines changed. I left my big job with the big bucks (and the big expense account). I drank fewer and fewer French wines.

In the eighties, I switched to more Spanish and Italian. In the nineties, it was more Argentinean and Chilean, then Australian, South African and New Zealanders. In the 21st Century, I added wines from the much closer to home USA.

I wasn’t the only one making changes. I went online today to check some facts and figures. According to Statista, the most recent production number for still wine in France was for 2021 when it totalled 37.8 million hectaliters. That was down from 53.3 million hectaliters in 2006. That’s almost 20,000,000,000 less bottles that were sipped and savored and swallowed. There were more recent numbers for the amount of French wine enjoyed in its home country; according to the EU, consumption was reported to be down 15% last year in France.

The changes in my drinking habits weren’t because I had lost my taste for French wine. It wasn’t that I didn’t still think that the French made many of the world’s very best wines. It was just that those French wines were often unaffordable and you often had to look far and beyond the famous French wine regions for the good values.

Over the last few weeks, I went on one of those value searches, without ever leaving Mexico.

I started by penciling a list of all of the French wines priced at under 500 pesos that were available through La Europea, La Comer, City Market and Costco. I then went online to various U.S. and Canadian sites to see how the critics rated them. I ended up with fourteen different wines and purchased one bottle of each.

Over the next two weeks, with the unselfish generosity of various friends and family, I tasted each of those fourteen wines. But why go to all that trouble you might ask.

Well, sometimes, Don Day’s Wife volunteers to cook a dinner for charity and, last month, I helped her raise her hand to host a French evening for Audubon de Mexico. I was particularly excited about it because part of the money would be going to my personal pet Audubon project, The Pollinator Garden in Parque Juarez.

The chef gave me her five course menu. My next task was to choose the five of the fourteen wines that best matched those four courses.

Up first would be Don Day’s Wife’s take on a Salad Niçoise. I focused on the taste of the tuna that is one of the ingredients and chose a wine I was familiar with long before my little tasting exercise.

I decided I wanted a sparkler and I couldn’t think of a better one that fit the budget than Baron Maxime 2019 Brut Gold Reserve Blanquette de Limoux. It’s an exclusive offered by the world’s biggest and one of the world’s smartest buyers of wine, Costco. 

Despite what those big Champagne producers might tell you, the world’s first sparkling wine originated in the southwest of France and is called Blanquette de Limoux.

The dominant flavor of this Blanquette de Limoux is citrus along with hints of fresh cut grass or hay. There are some similarities to Sauvignon Blanc both in the nose and taste but the grape variety is something completely different. It is called Mauzac and it must make up at least 90% of the wine according to AOC regulations, with the remainder of this one being Chardonnay.

Don Day’s Wife (aka The Champagne Lady) will tell you that this “compares well with French bubblies at four times the price”. I’ll tell you Costco’s price tag of $280 borders on the ridiculous.

Next on the menu was what started life as a cream of leek soup but has become a totally different taste experience with the addition of some unique spicing by the chef. To accompany it I wanted something very fresh that would cut the cream a little. I decided on a rosé from Southern France.

It’s called Les Calendières Méditerranée and I could almost taste the sea air along with apple and a hint of citrus. The bottle doesn’t identify the grapes but I’m guessing it’s primarily Syrah with, perhaps, some Grenache. I found it at City Market for $199.

I could have paired a red or a white with the next course, the chef’s pâte de campagne, but decided on a white. My first choice would have been a Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley but price kept all of them off the final fourteen list. Despite the chance that there might be some ABCs (anything but Chardonnay) at the dinner I went with it anyway.

Price eliminated all of the Chardonnays from Burgundy off the list so again I went south, this time to the Pays d’Oc. Back in the seventies I drank a lot of reds with the words Georges Duboeuf on the label but hardly a white so Duboeuf Chardonnay was a very new experience for me. There were the typical Chardonnay aromas of peach, pears and hazelnuts but there was also some apple and melon on the tongue. I found it at La Comer for $279.

The chef’s next course, a côte de boeuf Bourguignon of course demanded a red and, mostly out of selfishness (I’m a big fan of Rhône reds), I chose a Perrin Côtes de Rhone Réserve. Famille Perrin owns Château de Beaucastel which makes one of my favorites from the big buck days, a jewel of a Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

The winery doesn’t reveal the exact grapes that go into the blend of their Côtes de Rhone Réserve but the dominant taste is Grenache and you can bet there’s also Syrah and Mourvèdre. Plum is the major fruit taste but there’s also chocolate and toast. I can’t think of anything better at the price ($355 at La Comer) for a hearty stew.

I always find dessert a difficult course to pair. I could have taken the easy way out with a sweet French like a Sauternes but that was totally out of the question economically.

Don Day’s Wife’s choice of dessert made it easier. It was a chocolate truffle cake and chocolate and a big red wine make perfect sense to me. I decided on a Bordeaux and there was only one that had made the final fourteen.

The key to finding good but attractively priced red Bordeaux is buying from the less popular regions. Chateau Talmont is from Entre-Deux-Mers in the southeast portion of the region. Most of the celebrated wines there are whites so the reds go a little neglected. But they come from little more than a cork’s pop from the grand crus of St-Émilion and have an almost identical blend.

Chateau Talmont is 64% Merlot, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Cabernet Franc. Blackcurrant is the primary aroma and taste plus there was chocolate and coffee on the finish. I found it at La Europea for $320 a bottle. It was a fabulous finale to the meal and a fine way to toast the accomplishments of Audubon de Mexico.

You can hopefully still find the wines at the retailers mentioned. You can definitely still find The Pollinator Garden at Parque Juarez in San Miguel de Allende. Thanks to all of the people who generously gave to Audubon de Mexico and will help us feed even more birds and butterflies and bees.

If you would like to learn more about Audubon, perhaps become a member and contribute to their causes, you’ll find them at https://www.audubonmexico.org.