dreamrider wrote:As someone who enjoys a nice glass or bottle of wine from any of the named places, I have to say I think it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that France has been "supplanted" as a wine exporter.
Those place's have likely passed France by in quantity if not quality. Also remember that the French define wine's VERY narrowly, Champagne is wine that is only grown is a certain part of France. This area isn't very large (Legally it only covers 33,500 hectares (76,000 acres)) and has been used to grow grapes for at least 1,000 years. And these days Champagne is only used to refer to sparkling white wine. If anything ever happens to effect production, such as environmental changes or simply the soil growing exhausted from over production, that wine is lost, possibly forever.