Wine labels - a straight jacket for French wines?

Bitch from Australia

Did you know that if you're a french wine producer, making AOC wine, you are severely restricted on what you can put on the label of your wine bottle?

Therefore, if you are producing a AOC wine, you cannot put the grape variety on the label - the logic behind this being the concept of terroir and that the purchaser should KNOW what a Languedoc Roussillon wine tastes like or a Bordeau or a Cotes de Rhone, etc.

However, with the advent of the availability of New World wines and their relaxed labelling rules, Josephine Public has decided that she loves Chardonnay and Shiraz as her favourite White and Red. Josephine goes to the French section of her wine shop and cannot find any Shiraz or Chardonnay so she slips back to the Australian or Chilean section where she can confidently select her favourites.

And so the French Wine Industry suffers. It is true that most Vins de Pays can note the varietal on their label but then vins de pays are not highly thought of outside of France where Josephine Public thinks that this is a second rate wine ( not always the case at all)..

Some French vineyard owners are copping on to the marketing for outside the Republic and there are brands like FAT BASTARD, ARROGANT FROG, ROYAL BITCH proving extremely popular with the Josephines...

Time for the INAO (Institut National des Appellations d’Origine )to lighten up on the labelling rules and help us to choose the french wines we are pretty sure we will enjoy?