1990's cheap French sounding red wine?

[Dirk]

Piat D'or was a marketing ploy to get the British drinking red wine. It was made by taking a sweetish white wine, which was palatable to British wine drinkers at the time, and adding food colouring.
There was an interesting interview, with the guy who invented it, on a recent Channel 4 programme about convenience foods. I think he said that they originally used Blue Nun, which was a German wine, as a base.
The programme is episode 1 of 'Britain's Favourite Food' - available on C4OD.

 

[Hugh Manatee]

The French had never heard of it. It was misleading advertising but no one commented on it at the time.

"The French Export Piat D'Or" would be more accurate.

Is my memory for total trivia failing me? It might be. I thought that was the line they used at the end of the advert. I forget birthdays but I remember rubbish like this!

 

[Dayvo]

Piat dOr

Blimey, one minute to come up trumps!

I seem to remember one of Marmy's alter egos telling me he used to run an off licence (IIRC).

I was going to suggest Fleurie, but that's a bit more upmarket.

 

[Hitchington]

£1.99 a bottle FFS

https://www.calaiswine.co.uk/piat-d-or-red

 

[Tim Hall]

Is my memory for total trivia failing me? It might be. I thought that was the line they used at the end of the advert. I forget birthdays but I remember rubbish like this!

No, you're spot on, that was the advertising slogan that was used. Mine was just a weak attempt to inject a bit of legality, decency, honesty or truth into the situation.

 

[guitarpete247]

I knew it wasn't available in France as a friend had asked me to bring him some back from a booze cruise I went on back in the 90's.
The GF mentioned it yesterday and reminded me that I had told her it wasn't for sale in France but neither of us could remember the name of it.
I knew that I'd get an answer within a few seconds if I posted the question on here. I wasn't disappointed by the quick response from @Marmion.

 

[srw]

It was made by taking a sweetish white wine, which was palatable to British wine drinkers at the time, and adding food colouring.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/10/06/how-the-uk-came-to-adore-branded-wine-le-piat-dor/

Not quite. The marketeers used that method to give the vignerons a template from which to design a drink, but it was a French red wine in the bottle - EEC rules wouldn't have allowed anything else.

 

[Globalti]

On holiday probably in the early 1980's in the South of France we were drinking cheap red bought in 5lt plastic containers. It was I think 20 francs for the 5lts and 4 francs back on the container. La Clape or something like that.

I can beat that.... when I was at Grenoble Uni in 1977 we discovered an unlabelled tap in a white tiled basin at the back of the supermarket where you could refill your wine bottle for 1.77 Francs! If you got it on the floor it left a terrible purple stain though.

 

[guitarpete247]

My parents used to go to Pezenas visiting friends. Dad bought a large plastic container from local cave/co-operative. When he got to customs driving off the ferry. Customs guy told him "These come in 2 sizes. Let's go for the small one." This was when you had to pay duty on wine (like we'll have to do again soon) and the duty was more than he paid for the wine.

 

[Dayvo]

This was/is probably very cheap!

 

[raleighnut]

£1.99 a bottle FFS

https://www.calaiswine.co.uk/piat-d-or-red

A perfect wine with .... .... .. ........................... .... .......... ....Stew.

 

[GM]

Hirondelle too, iirc.

That used to be our favourite in the 70s when we didn't know any better, about £1.79 if my memory serves me well.

 

[slowmotion]

As a teenagers we were very fond of Black Tower. We also smoked Turkish fags, the height of sophistication. Then we discovered Clan Dew "A Blend of One Week Old Scotch and Sweet British White Wine", or something. The latter really was a serious mind-recalibrator. It all went to pot after that.

Didn't the Hirondelle advert say "you'll never get a duff bottle of Hirondelle", with a pig flying by?

 

[swee'pea99]

Piat D'or was a marketing ploy to get the British drinking red wine. It was made by taking a sweetish white wine, which was palatable to British wine drinkers at the time, and adding food colouring.

Is that true?

 

[slowmotion]

Didn't the Austrians or Germans add a dash of ethylene glycol (anti-freeze) to jizz up their white wines?