At your leisur...: WINE REVIEW.

Byline: By Helen Savage

THE French don't go in for harvest festivals in quite the way that we do here. There are some communities, especially in Burgundy, who mark instead the feast of St. Vincent, the patron of winegrowers. This falls rather conveniently in January - the time when the quality of the young wine can be properly assessed for the first time. It's wise to wait; in much of western France there would have been little enthusiasm for singing hymns of harvest praise this year.

2007 will be remembered as the year when mildew devastated many vineyards - the worst attack since 1930. 1930, the year when Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop made their debuts, was probably the worst vintage of the 20thCentury. This year won't turn out to be quite so bad. For one thing, it's been considerably warmer and drier than 1930; and winegrowers are better equipped to cope with challenging conditions. Nevertheless, I spoke to one winemaker who described conditions in part of the Medoc as 'catastrophic.'

If 2007 has had a saving grace of 2007 it has been a warm, settled September. Florence de la Filolie, a wine scientist, married to owner of one of St. Emilion's more famous wine estates wrote to me a week before they began to harvest. "The sunny weather, fresh and dry this September is superb - good conditions for the grapes to finish ripening. But this applies mostly to those who've known how to deal with the severe attack of mildew this year.

There are vineyards where there's nothing left - no leaves, nor bunches of grapes. Organic growers have had it especially tough; the rest of us have had to watch carefully and spray the vines at the right moment. It was hard work in the vineyard in August..."

Although it has been a very difficult year, some people will make good wine. Yields are down, even in the South East of France where mildew was much less of a headache, but don't right off 2007. As Florence also said, "it makes me want to scream when I hear people who, without ever having set foot in a vineyard, have been shouting that this vintage would be no good. Every winegrower will tell you that until the grapes have all been picked it's wise to say nothing." So you'll have to wait - probably until the feast of St Vincent before I'm prepared to say just how good a vintage 2007 really is.

It's not just the state of the vineyards that making the news in the French wine industry. Back in May, the French government, to the consternation of some small growers, decided to relax their arcane appellation laws to allow wines of 'vin de pays' category to be blended with those from other regions and sold, the first time for such a blend from France, with the names of the main grape varieties on the label and a vintage date.It's designed to allow new French brands to be created to take on the might of the Australian, Californian and South African giants (which fill all top ten places in the chart of best-selling wine brands in the UK).

The new rules mean that you can now buy a Cabernet Sauvignon that blends grapes from Bordeaux and Languedoc with a dash of wine from the Loire.

Some French merchants say that it's just a way to get rid of rubbish, but the only big firm to take the plunge and market the new wines - a powerful federation of ten co-operative cellars representing 13,000 grape growers has shown that the new blends in their 'Chamarre' range really are something to make a song and dance about. Try them!

Wine of the Month

Chamarre, Merlot/Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon Threshers pounds 6.99 or 3 for the price of 2. A deep ruby red blended from grapes that come mostly from the Languedoc and Bordeaux. It has spicy, sweetly ripe, soft black cherry and cassis fruit and soft tannins.