For several years now, consumers organizations and the press have alerted the public to the degradation of appellation (AOC) wines in France. Let us recall that in December 1995 consumer magazine UFC Que Choisir published an enquiry (Vins français, la qualité en peril = French wine, quality endangered) questioning in a well argued article the quality of wines and the authenticity of the claims of French AOCs. We also recall that Alain Berger, at the time director of INAO, declared in this article that “one can find on the market today some horrible products marked with the AOC label… AOC wines today represent half of the French production by volume. It is too much, we must stop this now”.

Finally we recall that the winemaker’s unions at that time arrogantly and violently attacked Que Choisir, and managed to get Alain Berger fired.

In its announcement on September 3rd, 2007, UFC Que Choisir asks the same question again, 12 years later: for wine consumers, is the AOC label reliable? Sève, an association of winemakers founded in order to obtain a radical reform of the appellation system, agrees with the answer given by UFC Que Choisir: No! Because “the loss of credibility of the AOCs is explained also by the coexistence within the appellations of two types of wine with very different quality-price ratios, and which must now be officially separated: on the one hand, wines that have a strong link to terroir that respect the original definition of AOC, on the other hand wines with less character that correspond to a new market demand, and that should develop outside of the appellation system. By distinguishing these two categories with distinct labels, we can satisfy the double requirement of making consumer choices clearer while safeguarding the AOC heritage.” (UFC Que Choisir)

The reliability of the figures quoted by Que Choisir in support of its affirmations may be debatable; but in fact nobody can provide precise or reliable figures. The fact is that the analysis given is essentially accurate; it merely restates the facts that everyone in the world of wine knows already, but has tried to avoid facing for 30 years. The analysis of Que Choisir also echoes the vote of the National Committee of INAO on June 2nd 2006, under the presidency of René Renou.

Beyond the important questions about the status and the competence of the new ODGs (Organismes de Défence et Gestion) that manage the appellations locally, UFC Que Choisir puts its finger right at the heart of the question of reforms: it is a matter of segmenting the French wine offering in a way that is readable to consumers, and of allowing the rewriting of the specifications for the terroir wine segment in accordance with the original definition of AOC.

Twelve years later, the reaction by the professional organizations to the consumer point of view is certainly more measured, which proves that the AOC scandal is now difficult to deny. We deplore the refusal by certain organizations, such as the CNAOC (National Confederation of AOCs), to face the problem. In a communiqué the CNAOC, while declaring itself “aware of the interest of UFC in the AOC reform”, merely states that it shall ensure that “each bottle of AOC wine meets its standards”, without ever facing the question raised by UFC: the rewriting of the rules for AOCs that claim a link to terroir. We are even seeing the refusal by certain organizations to implement the necessary segmentation of AOCs.

For all these reasons, SEVE is convinced that the voice of consumers, of the press, of the distributors, is indispensable to break the corporatist attitude dominating the French wine profession and, therefore, paralyzing it.

SEVE, September 10, 2007

To read more about SEVE’s analysis of this question, see:
The AOC reform will fail if the French wine appellation system refuses to redefine its market segments Marc Parcé
Assessing French appellations: do AOCs today bear any relation to what their creators imagined?
Freeing the taste of AOC wines from the shackles of “organoleptic profiling”

Contact : Marc Parcé +33-680017576 Patrick Baudouin +33-607689732
SEVE – Château Gombaude-Guillot 4 chemin des Grands’Vignes – 33500 Pomerol

In his reading of the recent reports from INAO and CNAOC (the national confederation of AOCs) concerning the specifications and the plans for inspections and controls on wine, all the positive points of the reform have been diluted or removed, while the most dubious ones, especially those that will bring a leveling down of all wines, remain.

In France each appellation now has an ODG (organization for its defense and management), but according to Marc these are not much different from the old « syndicats de cru », where in the name of some kind of democratic principles the majority (of bulk producers) ruled and any dissenting voices, usually coming from the best winemakers in the appellation, were ignored or suppressed, in fact they were not even invited to the debates.
The main feature of this reform is that tastings are being reintroduced as well as organoleptic tests. The reports seem to exclude any possibility of positive changes in the appellation system.

“The reform does not change the principle according to which tastings are the main instrument for controlling production in particular concerning AOCs.” (INAO)

Sève had organized a conference in Banyuls with neurobiologist Patrick MacLeod and statistician Marc Danzart, and had demonstrated amply the limits of sensorial analysis as applied to controlling appellation wines. The reforms proposed by Gérard Boesch were a step in the right direction because based on the idea that tastings cannot be one of the main elements in the recognition and validation of the quality procedures of a winemaker; instead, it is the analysis of how the wines are made that he recognized as essential in approving a winery’s product. This new declaration by INAO is a catastrophic regression and signals a return to standardization and homogenization of wines through tastings.

Even the CNAOC has come out with statements that show how, with the excuse that there is no time for anything but small cosmetic changes, in fact nothing will change!

Marc Parcé point out that Sève had given its support to this reform, because it seemed to contain the seeds of a renaissance based on quality, one that was coherent with the philosophy of Joseph Capus: that we need to defend this meritocracy because it has allowed many winemakers, through the appellations that are part of the French heritage, to make some of the best wines in the world.

On the contrary, by delaying necessary reforms and returning to organoleptic analysis, a procedure whose limits and deficiencies have been amply demonstrated, we will go back to the rule of mediocrity which constitutes a profound injustice towards winemakers that defend viticulture of terroir.

The reform being prepared today should only concern the segment of IGP wines in France, in other words the “vin de pays” plus bulk wines, and even for these wines the procedures are deficient.

If nothing is done soon to voluntarily define and impose specifications for what constitutes a terroir wine, an AOP in the language of the imminent EU regulation, then this reform will crush terroir winemakers and force them to define their own rules and their own marketing in order to survive.

While hoping that the spirit of reform can be maintained, Marc Parcé suggests reading two documents, also published on TheWineBlog.net:
Assessing French appellations: do AOCs today bear any relation to what their creators imagined?
Freeing the taste of AOC wines from the shackles of “organoleptic profiling”

At Sève we are working for a renaissance of appellations, not to bury them

Marc Parcé, Banyuls, 22 august 2007

The founding of the Appellations d’Origine Contrôlées in 1935: to organize the defense of terroir winemaking by the elite of winemakers.

J. Capus labored for 30 years to create the legal basis for his viticultural ethics system. Today most people in the system think that the appellations were created simply to combat fraud and tainted wines, they forget that the objective then was to defend fine wines against unfair competition from ordinary wines that laid claim to a noble origin. A law in 1905 had created the so-called Appellation d’Origine, but this law created no connection between origin and mode of production; in the next 20 years most ordinary wines managed to obtain the AO designation. The concept of origin became meaningless. In 1935 the AOCs were created in order to help consumers distinguish between true terroir wines, with clearly defined rules on soil, grape varieties and methods, and ordinary wines.

Roger Deon described the situation as one pitting the aristocracy making quality wines from poor soils against common people making bulk wine in the fertile plains. The law of 1935 attempted to prevent the common practice of labeling bulk wines with an appellation mark that implied a quality and origin that were most often absent.
With the new AOC the issue was to organize and defend quality viticulture, this was achieved by recognizing that geographic origin alone could not guarantee quality, and that one needed to define the production methods for each appellation (surface area planted, grape varieties, yields, degree of alcohol resulting from natural vinification without enrichment).

At the time, the new system was considered viable only if the State was present as guarantor of the heritage and the ethics of the system, with enough independence to resist the influences that could again bring corruption.

The 1970’s: what have the appellations become?

It was clear already in the 1970’s that the AOC system had strayed from the original spirit of 1935. A 1974 article in Progrès Agricole et Viticole as well as a book published in 1975 by Pierre Marie Doutrelant both argue that appellations no longer represent terroir. Many factors explain this: the illegal extension of the AOC areas, huge increases in yields, heavy handed use of oenological technology, consumer fraud, reclassifying of surpluses as AOC, and so on.

How could this happen? The economic success of the AOC system inevitably brought abuses, and the State simply turned a blind eye. Wine in 1955 was made much like it was in 1905, but winemaking techniques evolved immensely thereafter, allowing huge yields to be obtained. At that time the technology was not looking at soil dynamics or terroir, it was focused uniquely on producing as much as possible and then correcting the defects that inevitably resulted from grapes that were diluted and rich in nitrogen. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this (except maybe for the heavy use of pollutants), there is a need for higher volume wines and these techniques can be useful, but not for terroir wine!

The resulting systematic enrichment with sugar or tartaric acid or osmosis, and the use of more productive grape varieties were never debated in the context of terroir-vine-grape-must. Technology then was never channeled toward the improvement of terroir wines. Once again a greedy majority ruled that it wanted to produce more industrial wine and continue to label it as AOC; anyone who insisted on terroir and quality was quickly sidelined.

As a consequence of the industrialization of winemaking, the main criterion for determining if a wine belonged in the AOC system became the so-called “dégustation d’agrément”, the tasting that led to approval, introduced in 1967. It is incredible how such an imprecise and subjective test could become recognized as the prime test for quality! As pointed out in Progrès Agricole et Viticole, tasting is not selective enough; it can reward wines with no significant defects but also with no character. It is a mass selection criterion that leads inevitably to mass production. It can be influenced by error, by illusion, by camaraderie, by economic considerations, by various influences, by procedural faults, by cellar tricks.

Other reasons for the derailment of the AOC system are again the illegal extension of AOC areas in the ‘60s, and the phenomenal increase in yields, from an average of 30 hl/ha in the early 20th century to 50 hl/ha, with some reds hitting 60-70 and many whites reaching 100 hl/ha, not including surpluses. Already in 1934 Capus complained about AOC wines growing to 20% of production, today it is about 50%, as stated by N. Olszak at a conference in 2005. The original intent was to have AOC wines represent the top 10% of French production!

Finally one can blame the absolute power of the unions, whereby the majority of industrial growers dictate their rules right up to the INAO level, under the pretext of their economic success. In such a situation, what weight do a handful of “purists” carry? The press are systematically denigrated as “intellectuals” that have never worked the land, consumer views are arrogantly dismissed, critical winemakers are dismissed as moralist individualists and punished by refusing their wines, easily identified in a “dégustation d’agrément”, the approval for AOC labeling, with extremely serious economic consequences.

The rise of the dictatorship of the growers unions parallels the grouping of the opposition into associations – organic, biodynamic, “natural wine” makers, Union des Gens de Métier, Académie des Vins de France, Sapros, Renaissance des Appellations, Vignerons dans nos AOC, Sève, etc. – or along the lines of magazines like “le Rouge et le Blanc », GautMillau in the 90’s, Revue du Vin de France, and many other currents that somehow represent what Capus described as “winemakers that have decided to produce wine only using quality grape varieties at low yields, with infinite care, planting vines only in the best conditions and spending much more than bulk wine producers”.

In 1995 there came a turning point: consumer magazine Que Choisir published an article titled “French Wine, quality in danger” questioning the AOC system and arguing about its quality and authenticity. The article was based on a comparative tasting of French and foreign wines by “Le Rouge et Blanc”, questioning the whole terroir connection, exposing the systematic use of chaptalization, the high yields.

The situation exploded when the head of INAO himself, Alain Berger, stated that one could often find scandalously bad products labeled AOC, that today half the wine produced in France by volume is AOC, that is was too much and that it was time to put a stop to this. The reaction by the winemakers union was immediate, the union of Burgundy and Bordeaux cried treason, threatened Que Choisir and managed to get Alain Berger fired. But the system was already rotting from the inside.

René Renou: a return to the principles J. Capus

When René Renou was named president of the wine committee of INAO in 2000, he announced his plan: viticulture is heading for disaster, and it has five years to fix things. He had always questioned the way wine is made, and never refused to speak to the “rebels”, but he would tell them that they wanted change too quickly and told them to work with the unions, to make the entire wine sector progress as one. He soon came to realize that trying to make the entire profession progress at the same time, together, was contrary to the principles of J. Capus. AOCs are not about advancing together and mediocrity, AOCs are about distinguishing between terroir wine and industrial bulk wine.

Renou expressed his views in Le Monde in 2005, stating the horrors of AOC wines, and he exposed the union’s practices of protecting the worst producers under a cloak of secrecy and silence while punishing the best. The reaction was predictable.

Renou tried to propose a new high-end segmentation, with the concept of AOCE (the E standing for Excellence), with special status for “Sites et Terroirs d’Excellence”. He managed, despite virulent opposition from the unions, to pass a vote in 2006 segmenting the AOC into two categories, the first oriented toward terroir with high added value, the second oriented toward volume, technology and international market competition. He died shortly after this vote.
Today the reform is advancing, each appellation now has an ODG (organization for its defense and management) controlling it, and the reform must be completed by July 2008, but what is the goal?

While in theory the ODGs are meant to end the hegemony of the unions, in fact they are modeled on the unions. The minority will be recognized, but the majority will still impose its mediocrity with its vote. In the mean time the AOCs are still defined by the same old decrees, and no significant improvements are expected, with the excuse that there is not enough time to make changes. It is not clear where the reform is going, and whether re-segmenting the market is now possible.

Unless the INAO resolutions of 2006 are applied, the reform will fail.

The statistics of the first semester of 2007 brought good news, with exports up, Champagne makers unable to find enough grapes to meet demand, and appellation wines not doing so badly, however these results were not uniformly distributed among all growers. This illusory end of the crisis is used as an excuse to delay any further changes.

As seen above, the crisis has two major causes: firstly, AOC wines have become mostly ordinary wines, with irregular quality and unclear messages to the consumer regarding quality and origin; secondly, terroir wines and winemakers have been harassed by the AOC unions, especially in lesser regions where the pressure to boost production was highest. Ordinary wines have become the competition of AOC wines, just as Capus feared. Consumers often find many AOC wines to be inferior to ordinary wines, with disastrous consequences for the prestige of top wines.

As a result the concept of appellation is almost dead. What works today is brands. Champagne is a brand, so is Bordeaux, all the classed growths in Bordeaux are brands that have very little in common with AOCs, much like some appellations in Burgundy. These brand-AOCs work, combining AOC label with terroir, but this is not what J. Capus or R. Renou intended for the AOCs, as they are not based on any precise geographical delimitation, nor on rigid specifications to bring out terroir, because precisely in these prestigious AOCs there is a routine use of high yields, osmosis, mechanized harvests, chaptalization etc., everything is allowed, or rather, everything is practiced.
In order to succeed, some winemakers have decided to sell on their name alone, more or less outside the AOCs, thereby refusing the leveling mediocrity implied by the domination of the AOC unions.

If the reform continues on tis present path, without a new segmentation of the AOCs, we are just preparing the next crisis that will destroy the credibility of French wine. The new reform does much to improve the quality of ordinary wines, but it does not address the explosive problem of the persistent lying to the consumer about the relation of these wines to terroir. Champagne and Bordeaux continue to function, but for how long will this last, without rules that justify their claims to terroir?

If quality winemaking remains undefined and unprotected, French winemaking as a whole loses its credibility. There is a need for reform in bulk wine, but only quality terroir wine can make France competitive again on world markets, because France cannot compete on bulk.

The segmentation of the appellation system will happen, because the lie about AOCs is becoming too flagrant, and the market will require change. An honest and credible segmentation is urgent. It is urgent for the winemakers who believe in terroir, because without a credible label nothing will distinguish them from normal wine. About consumers, J. Capus already spoke in these terms: “shall we allow the consumer who buys an appellation wine at a price higher than ordinary wine to feel cheated twice out of three times?”. Consumer and press critiques have been consistently met with derision by the wine business. Finally, this segmentation is also urgent for wine merchants, because today they have to invest much energy to make up for the lack of credibility of the AOC labels.
From J. Capus to R. Renou: an assessment of the appellation system?

Can the State truly be the guarantor of this “meritocracy” and impose an ethic, resisting lobbies of all sorts? A segmentation of the market will happen, maybe through branding (as is currently happening for some wines), but branding cannot guarantee respect for procedures. We prefer to believe that it will happen through a renaissance of the ethic that brought about the appellation system, either through the State or through the winemakers themselves, those that are fighting for terroir. But the problem is that terroir wine is the specialization of a minority that has no power in the appellation.

Stop the fighting, organize a complementary segmentation

René Renou advocated this segmentation, as well as Jacques Berthomeau in 2001. It is in the interest of all winemakers, because there need not be any opposition between luxury terroir wines and simpler pleasure wines. Many wineries wish to operate in both segments, but they cannot if they do not have credible means to define and protect terroir wines. IGP wines will benefit from the leadership of luxury wines, redefining themselves as young wines, breaking with the old tired image.

The question is urgent: terroir wines need instruments to define, control and communicate; can they obtain through the current reform (the State, or Europe) what they could not get through the unions?

SEVE, August 2007.

Despite all the criticism and evidence of their shortcomings, these tasting are being reintroduced by the current AOC reform as the most important criterion for approving wines as AOC. The latest INAO report argues that it is not the tastings themselves that are at fault, but the way they are conducted, which does not offer guarantees of impartiality. In order to correct this, INAO proposes to replace the current tasting panels, composed only of the winemakers themselves, with panels comprising experts, consumers/merchants, and something described as “carriers of memory”, whatever that means, presumably sages that know what wines from a certain area should taste like!

This flies in the face of the reforms that Seve had suggested, because it reintroduces tasting as a fundamental test for approving wines, because it allows the local control organization to chose the tasting panels, and because it brings back, through this tasting, the idea of a taste profile for each appellation, and wines that do not fit that standardizing profile will be rejected. It is the return of the slippery notion of what is typical of an appellation. Such procedures are not based on any solid scientific, cultural or commercial logic.

Taste, Nature and Culture

It is now demonstrated that each individual has his own genetically determined taste apparatus, which is as unique as his fingerprints. Perception of taste is different for each one of us. These differences, initially determines genetically, are further complicated and altered by our life experience, by the cultural elements that each one of us absorbs in life, under the influence of the culture we live in.

The word “taste” is ambiguous, it refers both to the individual perception of a taster, and to the object being tasted. When one asks if something is good, one really means to ask whether the person likes it. Declaring something to be good is an attempt to objectify one’s own personal taste and impose it on others, while in fact it remains a strictly subjective thing. Nobody can know what the other perceives. Descriptions of taste are personal and thus are attempts to communicate what one perceives.

The appreciation of a taste or smell depends on the pleasure it brings to the taster. Whether a taste gives someone pleasure or not depends on that person’s life experience. One person may love strawberry jam, another may detest it, but who is “right”?

André Holley, professor of neuroscience, and Patrick MacLeod, neurobiologist, agree that taste is not contained in food, it happens when food comes in contact with our taste buds. Taste is, mostly, acquired, something we learn.
How then can one pretend to constitute an independent impartial tasting jury in charge of approving wines? The INAO document does not define the objectives of the tasting. One can argue that there is no legal basis for such a procedure. What is the jury looking for? We mentioned the ominous “carriers of memory”, these are the people that will impose their personal definition of what is typical of an appellation on the entire procedure, but who are they, and in what way do they represent consumers, or the market? A jury can never be impartial, behind the tasting there is always some motivation, commercial or otherwise.

The basis for tastings as a means for selecting or rejecting wines from an appellation

At a time when our knowledge of physiology was not as advanced as today, J. Capus already realized that a tasting cannot be scientific or objective. Such tastings were introduced as compulsory in 1967, and already by 1974 Jean Branas was arguing that, due to the arbitrariness of such tastings, one might as well put all wines under the AOC system, as there was no longer any objective distinction possible between a good wine and a great wine, and this could imply the disappearance of all but a few great wines in France. Branas had predicted what actually happened, the entry of ordinary wines into the AOC system.

In a 1997 article by Jean Salette (INRA Angers) the AOC tasting is redefined more specifically as an instrument to determine whether a wine corresponds to a profile that is considered typical of the appellation. The problem is that, while it might be interesting to try and define what is typical (again with all the problems of who determines what is typical and according to what standards and on what basis?), the end result can only be a homogenization of all wines in the appellation, so that any wine that deviates from this arbitrary norm is rejected. His whole article rests on a wrong understanding of taste physiology, and on an even more unrealistic expectation: given that the appellations were by then dominated by bulk producers, the definition of what is typical would be up to the majority producing the most uninteresting wines. Terroir would be defined by those who use massive fertilization, chaptalization, osmosis etc., not by the top winemakers.

While these procedures have brought about some improvement in bulk wines, at the same time the system has become a tool for excluding any wine that the jury decides is “atypical”, even if what distinguishes these wines from the rest is the fact that they may have… character, or that they may actually express terroir. As a result, one often hears critics preferring table wines to AOC wines.

The tasting procedures also derails the AOC system for the profit of particular interest groups, introducing unfair competition. Salette wanted a uniform taste in order to better identify French wine on international markets. But that taste is decided by a majority that use the same heavy terroir-effacing procedures and therefore produce similar soulless wines, therefore true terroir wines that do not fit this sad standard are easily dismissed.

A tasting is an arbitrary tool that has no serious legal basis. N. Olszak, honorary head of the faculty of Law at Strasbourg, says that the objectives of the AOC tastings are defined nowhere. Imagine submitting your wine, the result of more than a year’s work and the sale of which determines the success or failure of your company, to a secret jury composed in part of your competitors, and whose criteria of judgment are unknown, but who have the right to refuse you the use of the AOC label, something that has become absolutely necessary for the success of your wine. Your wine may be refused, but you have the right to resubmit it at two more tasting committees. When you are refused, the tasting bulletins may be totally incoherent with the stated reasons for the refusal. The system is totally arbitrary! The very act of selecting the members of the jury is not objective, it alone can determine what kind of wines will be selected or rejected (see Dominique Valentin, Banyuls conference, and Gil Morrot CNRS)

Dominique Valentin stated that there is no relation between the opinion of a panel of experts and the perception of the final consumer. At the same conference Marc Danzart, a statistician specialized in sensory analysis and the food industry, illustrrated how some common place notions are false. Regarding products preferred by consumers, he states that 75% of consumers are “eclectic”, they may give top scores to several products. About disliked products, the ones obtaining lowest average scores may also figure among the favorite products of a small group of consumers. There is no ideal product; one must therefore offer a variety of products satisfying different consumers. So it makes no sense for AOC committees to try to define one typical model that all others must copy. It makes even less sense when that model is a bad one.

Taste profile of a PGI (Protected Geographic Indication) wine

These wines (in French, IGP, the new designation for Vin de Pays) represent a high volume potential for each region, therefore winemakers are seeking more freedom and relaxed rules at all levels in the interest of competitiveness. Given that each winery will want to find its differentiating factors in order to compete on the international market, does it make sense to look for a standard that tends to make all wines from a given region taste the same? Who will decide these standards? These standards clearly make no commercial sense, and the proof is that they did not work for AOC wines.

Taste profile of terroir wines (PDO = Protected Designation of Origin)

Unlike PGI wines, PDO wines (in French AOP, the new designation for AOC) must express the terroir they came from, a unique identity. Here it is not a matter of pleasing everyone on a jury. Alain Berger, director of the INAO, stated in 1995 that an AOC wine is a product that one has the right not to like, and that they are the opposite of wines where terroir is neutralized and technology dominates. At the time his statements, published in Que Choisir magazine, cost him his job. If one accepts terroir, then one has to allow for variability within the geographic area, variability from vintage to vintage, and variability due to the particular style of each winemaker, according to C. Asselin (INRA Angers). Terroir is not just about soil, in the widest sense it is also about the work of man.
Again taste cannot decide on whether all these different expressions of terroir conform to some appellation standard. Even so-called experts cannot help having been influenced in their taste by their peculiar culture, by their history. Hence it is not by taste standards that these wines can be judged, but by the soundness of the winemaking processes involved.

How tastings can be useful in the appellation system.

Tastings as they are practiced today are discredited both by winemakers and by consumers, and therefore would make the reform of the AOCs impossible. They are the perfect tool to lower the standards of an appellation to the lowest level, thus maintaining the domination by the large bulk producers.
In normal circumstances, wine tasting is a private procedure between a seller and a buyer. In French law there is even an article in the civil code dating back to 1804 stating that when it comes to wine, oil and other products that one is used to tasting before buying, a sale is not considered valid until the buyer has tasted and approved the product. It would be absurd to argue that the tasting procedures of the appellations legally constitute some kind of collective purchasing act.

For appellation wines, the tasting of wines should be rehabilitated as a cultural act allowing the free exchange of opinions between winemakers with the object of comparing how each producer arrives at the best expression of terroir.

Conclusion

The distinction between terroir wines and ordinary wines must cease to be a reason for never ending conflict between winemakers. Few wineries can play the terroir game; the market niche is just too narrow. Often these same winemakers also produce simpler wines in higher volume that constitute the largest source of revenue, enabling them to continue producing their luxury wines.

Many defenders of terroir wine were in favor of the tasting committees, until they found they had been themselves rejected. The feeling of injustice in indescribable, and some ended up making all sorts of compromises with the committees, just to be able to keep the AOC label.

It is in the interest of all winemaking to switch from tasting the final result to controls to an earlier stage, the production conditions. It is also clear, from what we know now about the subjective nature of taste, that nobody has the right to impose his own taste as the standard, because there is no standard.

SEVE, August 2007