The French Diffe’rence.

Paradise can get pretty boring. As much as I love California wine, I often feel oppressed by its cheerfully fruit-driven sameness.

There is a cure for this relentless sensory tyranny: Paris. A week or so of eating and drinking in that marvelous city is a fine way to rediscover the amazing diversity of viticultural expressions that makes wine so endlessly fascinating.

Here in California wine comes in half a dozen flavors: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. A few other grapes such as Syrah and Sangiovese are making bids for prominence, but despite the hoopla, they have yet to establish firm identities here--largely because, when you get right down to it, a big, fat Syrah isn’t a whole lot different from a big, fat Merlot.

Exacerbating the narrow varietal range is a pervasive monotony of style. In recent vintages we have seen an increasing number of wines making regional statements about such areas as Napa Valley and Dry Creek Valley. However, California wines of all stripes tend to be oppressively similar in character: big, bold, rich and, almost always, reeking of oak.

That sameness is partly the result of a warm climate with relatively few variations from place to place, which produces uniformly ripe grapes and, therefore, big, high-alcohol wines. It’s also derived from the heavy-handed winemaking that has become the California signature, aiming to shape every Cabernet Sauvignon into a simulacrum of premier cru Bordeaux, every Pinot Noir into grand cru Burgundy and so on down our short varietal roster.

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Things are different in Europe, where hundreds of grape varieties and dramatically varied climate/terrain combinations yield an astonishing array of distinctive regional wines. France, in particular, has evolved into a constellation of fine-tuned wine regions, each with its own clear identity. Winemaking is seen as a partnership with nature through which the vineyards of a given place express their unique qualities.

Thus, the lively Cabernet Franc of Chinon doesn’t try to be the sterner, more angular Cabernet Franc of St. Emilion nor the fruity Cabernet Franc of Anjou. The Sauvignon Blanc of Sancerre doesn’t try to be the Sauvignon Blanc of Graves--nor even the Sauvignon Blanc of Pouilly, which is just across the Loire from Sancerre but with such different soils and local climate that its Sauvignon Blanc expresses its own sensory profile.

In other words, diversity of local and personal expression is prized at a level well beyond California’s current state of evolution. In wine and food, as among people, vive la difference is the rule in France.

One has to take the initiative, of course. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans fail to make the most of the opportunities France presents to wine lovers; their single-minded pursuit of preconceived pleasures negates any chance of sensual discovery.

I was thinking about that recently in a Paris bistro. A pair of American tourists at a nearby table were disgruntled campers, and they were blaming it on the French. Of course, it was their own fault.

The problem was that they were wine geeks in search of something familiar, and they weren’t finding it. “I can’t believe they don’t have any premiers crus Bordeaux,” groused one, and the other just shook his head in disgust.

For a moment I considered leaning over and pointing out a couple of things. Like that the name of the place, on a fine stretch of sidewalk along the Place des Vosges, was Ma Bourgogne--as in BURGUNDY. Hellooo. And that the short but excellent wine list naturally specialized in food-friendly regional wines from the greater BURGUNDY region.

I didn’t say anything. The waiter did, however. Patiently explaining that the restaurant had a defined style of food and wine, he more or less ordered them to drink a Beaujolais from the village of Morgon (a shrewd call, because Morgon generally produces the biggest, most California-like Beaujolais). They looked skeptical, but it only took a sip to put smiles on their haggard, jet-lagged faces.

Beaujolais will do that. I was drinking some too--a ’97 Chiroubles (another village in Beaujolais), Domaine de la Combe au Loupe. Full-bodied yet buoyant and silky on the palate, with bright red-fruit flavors, it was just the wine for steak tartar and thick slices of crusty bread.

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Of course, the really fine restaurants have who’s who lists of the greatest French wine, as they should. While dining on chef Alain Passard’s three-star cuisine at Arpege, for example, my wife and I happily rose to the occasion and drank a ’92 Meursault, Domaine Roulot “le Mon Plasir.” (Which the sommelier decided on the spot to decant, thereby releasing an exquisite but very delicate perfume.) Noblesse oblige, n’est-ce pas? If you must drink Chardonnay, it might as well be Mersault.

But most of the time we are quite content to follow the logic of a restaurant’s cuisine and choose from among the wines that the proprietors believe go best with their food.

One evening, after a particularly inspiring session with Fra Angelico in the Louvre, we found our way to Pitchi-Poi, on a charming little courtyard in the Marais. The food is Polish, but the wine list is focused on Touraine (one of more than 75 Loire Valley appellations). I didn’t recognize any of the producers, but knowing that the wines had been carefully chosen to show off the food removed any necessity of wine-geeky behavior. We ordered a rose, Domaine de la Rochette ’98 from winegrower Francois Leclair.

It was a beautiful wine showing the best qualities of Pineau d’Aunis, a red grape grown in the lower Loire since the Middle Ages. Bone-dry and vibrantly fruity with a delicate red-berry perfume, it was equally good with duck confit and sole--and its brilliant salmon-pink hue glowed seductively by candlelight. Touraine! Who knew?

The next night we grappled with some artisan andouillettes (formidable tripe sausages) at le Passage near the Place de la Bastille. Now, that was a situation where an angular, slightly mean Bordeaux might have worked--but how much more pleasurable was our Auguste Clape Cornas ‘96, a perfumed and gutsy yet succulent Syrah. It seemed to have been made expressly to tame and enhance the wild flavors of andouillettes.

We spent another day in Reims, barely catching the late-evening train back to Paris. By the time we pulled into Gare de l’Est we were starving. The bistro next to our hotel was just closing its kitchen, but they offered us a big plate of charcuterie and bread. Too weary for wine games, I simply asked the waiter for a pichet of good red wine; he returned with a carafe of brilliant ruby-red Sancerre rouge.

What a wonderful Pinot Noir: fine and intense but nowhere near heavy, with clear, almost piercing cherry-inflected fruit that was like stained glass on the palate compared to the muddy, confused impression of a typical over-the-top Pinot from California.

I instinctively asked for the producer’s name--it was a ’97 Domaine du Petit Bois from winegrowers Pierre and Alain Dezat--but I didn’t have to. It was simply the perfect wine for the moment, as the waiter knew quite well.

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I thought of my fellow American wine geeks from Ma Bourgogne every once in a while. I pictured them lurching around Paris with their tattered list of wines recommended by some expert back in the States, rejecting wine list after wine list filled with treasures from France’s gloriously diverse wine regions.

Too bad. Discovering those treasures is close to the heart of the wine experience itself, and certainly one of the basic reasons to go off eating and drinking in Paris. After all, you can get premier cru Bordeaux just about anywhere in the world, if that’s what you want.

Smith is writer-ar-large for Wine & Spirits Magazine.