What are appellations?

In legal language, French wines are referred to as wine appellations. This means that the production and marketing of wines are subject to French and European rights if producers want to benefit from the AOC-AOP or IGP labels. All the conditions for the production of wines, as well as the delimited geographical areas, are recorded in a specification that is approved by decree of the Ministry of Agriculture of the French Republic, and by the European Commission. Everything is carefully controlled: geological characteristics, natural and human factors… It is important to specify that before the purchase by the consumer of a bottle of AOC or PGI wine it was subjected to chemical and organoleptic analyses by a control commission mandated by the INAO. This ensures the origin and nature of the wine purchased by consumers. The French vineyard produces 3240 different wines for 383 different appellations in 80 departments and 16 large vineyards. We will obviously talk about the appellations of the great names of Burgundy: The grandiose Chardonnay which is at the origin of the great wines Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet, Meursault … The estates of Romanée-Conti, Jean-François Coche Dury, Mortet, produce extraordinary wines