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France
Appellations and other classifications
The appellation system was created in 1935, after nearly 30 years of piecemeal and pragmatic legislation, to protect the authenticity of wines and the livelihoods of their producers. It does this by defining boundaries and, within each area, stipulating the permitted grape varieties, yields and alcohol content; cultivation, vinification and maturation practices; and labelling procedures.
Fine distinctions may result in a large number of subregions. In Bordeaux, for example, in addition to the generic Bordeaux appellation, there are 56 smaller appellations. Burgundy, which is less than a quarter the size of Bordeaux, has no fewer than 98 appellations, some of them tiny but nevertheless divided between many owners. That makes it probably the most complex of all French regions.
As far as the consumer is concerned, appellation d'origine controlee guarantees the origin and style of a wine--at least in theory. What it does not do, in theory or practice, is guarantee quality, and in many appellations, such as generic Bordeaux or Anjou Rose, the standards are clearly inadequate.
In the past--as recently as ten years ago--it could be said that the tighter the specifications of an individual appellation, the better its wines would be. Now, anyone who toes that line does so with less conviction, simply because the appellation authorities, often under the influence of local vested interests, have sometimes shown themselves to be pointlessly, even harmfully, intractable. In Provence, for example, the leading estate, Domaine de Trevallon, was refused appellation status on the grounds that its blend contained "too much" cabernet sauvignon.
Unless the authorities display some commonsense flexibility (as they have done recently in some places, such as Madiran), it can be difficult for dynamic, quality-conscious winemakers to innovate, improve their wines, or even just label them differently--labelling by grape variety, for example, is almost never permitted for appellation wines (with the exception of AC Alsace, where the practice is traditional and where there is only one principal appellation). This state of affairs has led some producers to opt for the less prestigious but much less restrictive vin de pays (VDP) classification. This was created in 1979 as an intermediate category between vin de table, the most basic of French wine, and AC. (There is also a small category called vin delimite de qualite superieure, or VDQS, which was intended to be for novice or probationary appellations, but it dwindles with every promotion to AC.) Vin de pays was introduced principally to encourage producers of vins de table to raise their standards, especially in the vast Languedoc-Roussillon area in the south, and overall it has worked extremely well, now accounting for three in every ten bottles of French wine. These include wines labelled by grape variety, or vins de cepages as they are known locally. The French tend to be dismissive of varietal wines, insisting that wine is much more than mere grapes--it is terroir--but recently they have had to acknowledge that these wines are commercially successful. So vins de pays such as Chardonnay Vin de Pays d'Oc now compete with varietal wines from countries like Australia, Chile and Argentina, and have become one of the recent success stories of French wine.
As complicated and absurd as it may sometimes appear, appellation d'origine controlee is not all bad. If it were, you can be sure it would not have spawned so many similar appellation systems around the world. Furthermore, it has played a critical role in protecting the identity and reputation of French wines, both at home and overseas.
From "Encyclopedia of Wine"
©Global Book Publishing Pty Limited 2000
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