The head of France’s appellation authority, René Renou, has called for a new quality standard in French wine, to stand above the current AOC system.
The President of INAO (Institut National des Appellations d’Origines), speaking at a seminar at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire, said he was proposing a wholesale revision of the laws which categorise French wine; the most sweeping changes since the system was introduced.
He said: “French wine makers have a hangover. It comes not only from the competition posed by the excellence of wines from the ‘New World’ producers, but from the fact that there is no longer a wine lake, but a wine ocean. There is a world surplus of wine.”
In response to this, he wants to make the French system clearer and more transparent to customers. His proposal is to create only two ‘families’ of wine – the standard AOC, which guarantees that the wine comes from a specified area, and a second level called AOCE, which will guarantee that the wine bearing it offers a certain standard of excellence.