Wine

Talk about wine to more or less any member of the older generation in the Cantal, and it will soon become clear that the most important criterion used when judging whether a wine is worth buying or not is not so much its quality, but its price and, even more so, its alcoholic strength. This is probably a hangover - if you will excuse the term - from the time when the only wine available was to a large extent piquette, a mean wine which easily turned vinegary because of its low alcoholic strength. The indication ‘11°’ or ‘12°’ used to be a guarantee of drinkability. Attitudes have now begun to change, though, with the increasingly high standard of wines available in the cheap to middle price range. And as people, particularly the younger generation, drink less wine nowadays, they are more interested in quality - an interest that has been fùelled in recent years by the hypermarkets’ annual ‘wine fairs’, which offer a wide range of regional wines as well as top clarets and burgundies, all very moderately priced.