On AOCs

And an analogy that might make them a little more relatable

Appellation d’Origine Controllée, or AOC: these are words that I say and define quite frequently. The literal translation to English is “protected designation of origin,” and effectively it’s a legal framework created in France about 100 years ago to govern and protect wine production.

Fraud has always been an issue in wine – in the 1700s, the king of France decreed that all wines produced in what we now call the Côtes du Rhône be sold and transported in barrels branded with CDR to guarantee their origin and quality. That’s effectively what the AOC system is all about: ensuring the consistency, quality, and provenance of wine.

There are really two key elements to any AOC: a physical place where the wine comes from, and production standards, a.k.a. rules about how that wine is made. Typically, this includes things like what grape varietals are allowed, whether you can use machines to harvest, blending and aging requirements, yield limits, and on and on.

This is why in France, and in Europe in general, we refer to and label the wines by where they come from, rather than the grape varietal – it’s because by virtue of it saying “Sancerre” on the bottle, it has to be 100% Sauvignon Blanc if it’s white, 100% Pinot Noir if it’s red. The grape varietal is redundant information.

Basically every region, sub-region, and village (and vineyard you could argue) in France has a signature varietal or blend of varietals that they use for their wines in the AOC system.

Most people get this in theory, but in practice, many of the questions I get are around how this whole system works. Who creates these? Who decides the rules? Is it a government agency? Is there corruption? Do wine producers hate this? How hard is it to change the rules?

Enjoying a glass of bubbly at Champagne Le Gallais. Champagne is usually the region I use to explain the basics of AOCs, because we all know you can’t make champagne anywhere — it has to come from this very special region of France.

Enter: The Condo Board

The analogy I’ve found over the years that is the closest tie, and what I tell people to think about, is condo boards.

Now stay with me: Imagine a city block. There might be 20, 30 buildings on that block. Some might have been built by the same architect at the same time, and in terms of physical structure started as identical. But every single one of those buildings is unique, because of the people who live there but also, very importantly, because of the condo board. Every building will have one, and depending on who has lived in that building, who has been elected to the board, what issues or controversies have arisen over that building’s history, the rules for that condo association will be different than the buildings around it. And the people who are on the condo board are people who own/live in the building too, of course.

This is effectively how AOCs are managed. There is a board that consists of producers who make wine in that AOC, and they are charged with running that AOC, including enforcement and changing the rules. Now just like a condo board in one building or another, how that power is defined (voting rules, elections, etc.) and their relationship to the rest of the producers can vary, but in essence it’s the same.

What that means is, some AOCs are more flexible, some are more rigid. Some are more experimental, some are more traditionalist. But there can be every kind of debate and conflict that can occur in any building that any of us live in, trivial or great. Climate change is putting a lot of these bodies to the test in recent years, because they have to make decisions on how to adapt centuries-old traditions (even if the legal system has only been around for 100 years) to a rapidly changing environment.

VDF and IGP

And, there are some people who can’t stand living in this situation, just as there are people who are driven mad by living in an apartment building. They want their own land and their own four walls that they can do with what they please. So they choose to operate outside of the system, by calling their wines Vin de France or VDF – the only requirement you have to meet for this is that the vines are in France and the wine is made here. The downside is that even if your vineyard is physically in Sancerre, because you’re not following their rules, you can’t say anywhere on the bottle that that is where your wine is from. VDF is like the pioneers of the wild west – they can be anything, from anywhere, so you kind of have to know the producer to know what you’re getting.

There’s also a middle category called IGP, or Indication Géographic Protégee, which tends cover entire regions, so the customer has some idea of where you are, but you generally have a lot more flexibility in terms of what grape varietals you can use, how you make your wine, etc. Pays d’Oc (of the Languedoc) is the largest one of these in France. They usually represent really good value, and a middle ground between experimentation and tradition. They might be like a relatively flexible, chill HOA.

A lot of people who have struggled with the notion of AOCs seem to find it a little more understandable thinking about it through this lens. After all, we’ve all had a crazy neighbor who calls the exterminator on the building because they saw a mouse or a condo association where three people keep voting down the project to replace the windows because they’ve lived in the building for 50 years and they replaced them back in the ‘70s.

See? Winemakers are just like us.

Now your turn: Did you find this helpful? Do you think it works as an analogy? Do you have your own way of thinking about or explaining AOCs? Let me know in the comments!