help with french wine

[ddf68]

Newbie, AC is short for Appellation d'Origine Controlee. Roughly speaking that means "Place-name of origin controlled". Most French wines are named for a geographical area in which they are produced. That is, the name of a wine is almost always also the name of a region, a town, or even a particular vineyard.

In order to use a particular place name, such as "Bordeaux" or "Premiere Cotes de Bordeaux", one is restricted in the types of grapes one can use, when harvest can start, how ripe the grapes have to be, maximum yields, etc. The idea behind this is that the French think that in the hundreds of years they've been making wine they've figured out the ideal combination of all these factors for all the different wine producing regions in France. Thus, a wine permitted to use a controlled appellation is, in theory, a wine of some quality, because it has been made in the "right" way.

The AOC system does not expressly recognize qualitative differences between various wine producing regions. However, within wine producing regions differences in the specificity of the geographic name generally are supposed to relate to differences in quality. That is, a wine with a regional name, like Borgougne (Burgundy) is theoretically not as good as a wine with a village name, like Chambolle-Musigny, which is theoretically not as good as a wine with a vineyard name, like Beaune Clos des Ursules (Beaune is a village, Close des Ursules is a vineyard in that village).

Obviously, there are other important variables. The motivations and ability of the producer are hugely important. The same wine, appellation speaking, made by two different producers can be radically different in style and quality. Vintage is also awfully important because weather, pests, and disease have a huge impact on the quality of the grape the winemaker has to work with.

There are numerous exceptions to this basic framework. Bordeaux, for example, has a number of classification systems that are theoretically directly tied to quality. Alsace uses grape names (Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, etc.) on its wines.

Your wine fits within this system as follows. The regional appellation is Bordeaux. Within that appellation there are numerous smaller regions. Premiere Cotes de Bordeaux is one of these smaller regions. Some of these regions, the Haut-Medoc in particular, also have village appellations (Margaux, St. Estephe, etc.) Vineyard appellations are not used in Bordeaux. That story, however, will have to wait for another day.

Hope this has been some help.

ddf