Wine – vin – is drunk at just about every meal or social occasion. Red is rouge, white blanc, or there's rosé. Vin de table or vin ordinaire – table wine – is always cheap and generally drinkable. AC – Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée – wines are another matter. They can be excellent value at the lower end of the price scale, where favourable French taxes keep prices down to around €4 a bottle, but move much above it and you're soon paying serious prices for serious bottles. This said, you can buy a very decent bottle of wine for €5; €10 and over will buy you something really Nice.Restaurant mark-ups of AC wines can be outrageous. Popular AC wines found on most restaurant lists include Côtes du Rhône (from the Rhône valley), St-Émilion and Médoc (from Bordeaux), Beaujolais (the release of the "new" Beaujolais – "le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé" – is a much-heralded event on November 15 of every year) and very upmarket Burgundy. The basic wine terms are brut, very dry; sec, dry; demi-sec, sweet; doux, very sweet; mousseux, sparkling; méthode champenoise, mature and sparkling. There are grape varieties as well, but the complexities of the subject take up volumes. A glass of wine at a bar is simply un verre de rouge, de blanc or de rosé. If it is an AC wine you may have the choice of un ballon (a large round glass). Un pichet (a pitcher) is normally a quarter-litre of the house wine if available, or you can simply ask for un quart or un demi – a quarter- or half-litre carafe.
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