Ann Arbor, 2004 05 04 The French Government body charged with maintaining and enforcing the classification scheme for French wines, cheeses, and other artisinal products stunned wine producers with a proposal for a sweeping reform of the wine AOC system.

The Institut National des Appellations d’Origine -- INAO -- pointed to a general decline in the fortunes of the industry and especially in the export of AOC wines, in theory the top of the quality ladder in France's production. With the overall objective being to improve consumer confidence in the quality of French wines, INAO proposed to carry out this sea change under three general efforts or, as they put it, principles.

First, they intend to rewrite the entire AOC classification system, citing its incompleteness, inconsistency, and inclarity. The new descriptions of wine appellations would be highly structured. (Click here for an English version of the new AOC structure.)

Next, under the new proposal, there would be two forms of classification, an AOC similar to the current AOCs, guaranteeing that a given wine was made in a certain place, of a certain set of grapes grown in given areas, using a specified set of methods. A new classification, Appellation d’origine contrôlée d’excellence (AOCE) would have, in addition to guarantees about how the wine was made, guarantees, based on structured tastings, of the quality of the wine itself. The INAO press release is at pains to point out that AOCE and AOC are not a pair of members of a hierarchy, unlike AOC, VDQS, and so on.

Finally, the new effort will call for rigorous controls and enforcement. The "mobilization" of a "brigade" of officials is proposed. They appear to propose evaluating AOCE status regularly, every 5 years. AOC status would be visited "in a random but regular and strict way."