Fine French wine with a screw top? At La Cote Saint Jacques restaurant, a Michelin three-star temple of gastronomy in the Burgundy region, chief sommelier Arnaud Laplanche isn't ashamed to give it a try.

He's part of a quiet revolution sweeping the French wine business, the world's largest and fighting to stay that way. France's goal: to hold off New World winemakers that have wooed wine lovers and gained market share with jazzy marketing campaigns, helpful information on what's inside the bottle, and quality assurances that some French wines lacked.

Screw tops, boxed wines, colourful easy-to-understand labels and sophisticated marketing — innovations pioneered by countries like Australia and South Africa — are making inroads in tradition-bound France, even if many still sneer.

"We didn't see the danger coming from the New World — where competition came with a completely new approach to wine making," said Renaud Gaillard, deputy head of the French Federation of Wine and Spirits Exporters.

'It's very frustrating when a wine is corked. Screw tops are a more sure way of preserving the wine.'- Arnaud Laplanche, sommelier

"Finally we understood we had to change not only production but also the way the product is presented. We had to make the buying process easier."

Laplanche said he was initially reluctant to give up the showman part of his job — uncorking a bottle — but was won over by the taste and prospect of no more wines that are spoiled by premature oxidization — "corked," in wine parlance.

"It takes away the charm of opening the bottle, smelling the cork," he said. "But it's very frustrating when a wine is corked. Screw tops are a more sure way of preserving the wine."

The screw-top shake-up was inspired as much by practical considerations as by consumer preference. Increased demand on cork suppliers has forced manufacturers to harvest immature cork, which some suspect causes the oxidization.

While some argue that wines requiring more oxygen as they age require an old-fashioned cork, many winemakers are turning to more reliable seals for all but their heaviest reds.

French report urged producers to be less elitist

Back in 2001, a bleak report on the state of the French wine industry written for the Agriculture Ministry urged winemakers to lose the snobbish attitude and be more attentive to consumers.

The 80-page document included a five-point lesson in marketing for beginners: product, price, promotion, packaging and place.

"A logic of marketing didn't exist before," said Gaillard. "We started talking about marketing of the offer and marketing of the demand — terms which are quite unbelievable for wine — but we now know what they mean."

Since then, French producers have taken steps to make their wine more accessible. Bottles are starting to look different. Some old-fashioned labels with grainy pictures of wine chateaux are going out, replaced with bright colours, brand names and innovations once unheard of, such as printing directly onto the bottle.

Crucially, grape varieties are making regular appearances on wine labels as French producers accept that most international consumers are more interested in the grapes, rather than what estates or vineyards they're from.

This is helping France's wine and spirit industry reverse decades of decline. Last year the industry exported nearly $15 billion US worth abroad, a record and an increase of nearly seven per cent year-on-year.

Carton 'French rabbit' outsells bottles in Canada

Success stories include "French rabbit," the brand name for wines cultivated from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France.

The vintage-dated, appellation-specific wine comes in bright-orange cartons with screw-top closures — and the 250-millilitre version even comes with a straw.

Introduced in 2005 in the Canadian market in both glass bottles and cartons, the carton version was within a month outselling glass bottles by 21 times.

However, it's the use of screw-tops for quality wines that have come to symbolize the changes taking place in the ultra-conservative world of French wines.

Michel Laroche, whose family has been tending Chablis vineyards for five generations, began experimenting with them in 2001 after a harvest of bad quality corks. A year later he became the first French producer to offer screw tops on grand cru wines — a label reserved for the best vineyards.

He says screw tops are a better solution than synthetic corks, which sometimes leave air pockets or gaps and can be hard to remove.

As well as cutting out returns of corked wine, the switch has been good for business, he said. In Quebec, Laroche introduced screw tops in 2004 and boosted sales by 15 per cent in one year. Wine lovers were won over when they saw quality wines being sold with a screw top.

"If you want people to believe you then you have to start with the prestige products," Laroche said.