Shocking: The French are drinking flavored wines (red lollipop! peach!) and loving them

The French have gotten into fruit-flavored wines in a big way. As if news of declining consumption of wine overall wasn’t enough, drinkers in France are snatching up bottles of rosé pamplemousse (grapefruit-flavored rosé) and rosé mandarin or black currant at an ever-growing rate.

Sales of flavored wine (and sangria) in France jumped 45.2% in 2013 over 2012’s figures, “beating rum, specialty beers, cognac and iced teas,� according to a study by IRI in the beverage trade magazine RayonBoissons.

Stocked at the supermarket, they’re inexpensive and easy drinking. They’re also lower in alcohol at 8% to 10.5%. Jean-Philippe Perrouty reports on the British site www.wineintelligence.com that the flavored wine craze is biggest with younger people in France, who drink them as apéritifs. A study cited by Perrouty conducted on behalf of ViniSud (the International Exhibition of Mediterranean Wines and Spirits) in France concluded that among those 18 to 34 years old, 33% drink flavored wines as an apéritif.

Hold on, there’s hope: Many still prefer white wine or plain old rosé as an apéritif. But the fans of flavored wine are growing.

One company, “V et Fruits,� offers 26 varieties of flavored wines. Crazy. A Bordeaux winemaker that also sells grapefruit and passion fruit-flavored wines came out last year with a new flavor, Rouge Sucette (Red Lollipop). It’s red wine tinged with Cola. Shocking.

For the longest time I thought Americans were the only ones with a proclivity for flavored everything — lattés, bread, olive oil, muffins, marshmallows, tea and God knows what else. This is, after all, the home of 31 Flavors.

A bottle of Blanc Pêche (white wine flavored with peach) may be on the way to our shores as I write this. Or it may already be lurking on a supermarket shelf ready to leap out and start a flavored wine craze here, too.

Be scared. Be very scared.

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Inexpensive, everyday winesCola-flavored wine for the younger audience. It’s come to this?

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Twitter: @sirenevirbila