Joy is unconfined, one assumes, in the Languedoc village of Montpeyroux: last week it became the 369th French Appellation d’Origine Controlée. This will mean stricter controls on the red grapes used – but you can go wild and use 10% Counoise! – and maximum yields of 45 hectolitres per hectare. The commune’s wines were previously labelled AOC Languedoc-Montpeyroux. But will it really make any difference?
Put another way, are such rulebook changes the best way of improving a wine region’s fortunes? I’ve been thinking about what makes a wine’s name, or re-builds it, following illuminating recent visits to both Muscadet and Soave.
Each area saw its name cemented in the 1960s by wines from a few historic, well-sited vineyards. Muscadet and Soave became two of the best-known affordable French and Italian bottles in northern European stores. Then farmers with flat, fertile land cashed in and planted vineyards, which in the 1970s and 1980s they doused with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides to drive up production, much of which they sold to négociants or co-ops. The resulting seas of mediocre wine made Muscadet and Soave bywords for anonymous white plonk. Supermarkets held prices down; serious wine buyers lost interest.
How to rebuild those reputations? In Muscadet, quality growers began lobbying in the 1990s for site-specific crus, of which there are now ten, created from 2011 on distinctive terroirs. Better winemaking techniques and the effects of climate change improved quality across the board. And the end of the 1980s boom, with sales ravaged by New World competition, led to the vineyard area shrinking by more than half. “There was some natural selection among winemakers: it was sad, but the best survived,” says top producer Jérémie Huchet. Of 700 producers in the early 1990s, fewer than 300 operate today. But the improvement in quality is startling, and gaining serious buyers’ attention.
Soave, meanwhile, has not seen the same attrition. From the historic Classico zone on the hillsides, the denominazione more than quadrupled in size to 7,000 ha by the 1990s. Of that, the authorities have since declassified just 1,300 ha of over-cropped land. But in 2001 they created a new, smaller DOCG Soave Superiore. A lengthy exercise mapping quality sites resulted in 2020 in the naming of 33 Unità Geografica Aggiuntiva (UGAs), ie crus. However, aside from the new map’s sheer complexity, many producers appear confused about the designations. Lucia Vesentini of the Soave Consorzio admits that Italian consumer perceptions remain uncertain too: “The over-50s think it’s a more old-fashioned, easy wine, but younger consumers don’t know what Soave is.”
Montpeyroux faced a different challenge: it never had much of a name to start with. Forty years ago, this was mostly bulk red wine country (it gained AOC Languedoc status in 1985.) Growers turned around that reputation through a move to quality, firstly with biodynamic and organic viticulture – around 80% of the appellation’s vineyards are now certified organic or sustainable. They also cut yields. And they leaned into Carignan, once derided like Muscadet’s Melon de Bourgogne. As in Muscadet, the secret to this unfashionable grape making interesting wines is old vines, low yields and rigorous site selection.
Three wine areas, three different results in improved quality and reputation. The question is how far the rulebook – French appellations’ Cahier des Charges, Italian zones’ Disciplinare di Produzione, and the labyrinthine bureaucracy of France’s INAO and equivalents – are really responsible for better bottles. Plenty of New World regions have made their names without resorting to such frameworks: Napa, Swartland, Central Otago. For that matter, some of France’s natural winemakers have made names for themselves while ignoring the rules, adopting the essentially meaningless “Vin de France” designation as a badge of pride.
For despite the numbing detail of cahier rules on yields, planting densities and pruning, the system is in fact quite a blunt instrument. Europe’s appellation laws began in France 1905, where their original purpose was to shut out competition from Algeria. French settlers there had hoovered up the market driven by phylloxera’s devastation: lots of Algerian red got mixed with Bordeaux and Burgundy. Forget typicity: this was about French vignerons keeping their piece of the action. France’s appellations then took national form in 1935, with other nations copying the model. Italy’s DOC system arrived in 1963: it has long been a notoriously poor indicator of quality.
If a region’s producers all commit to more serious winemaking, they can raise their wines’ standard and reputation. It’s heartening when farmers take this kind of collective action for the common good, and easiest in little places like Montpeyroux, with just 16 independent producers and one 19-member co-op. By contrast, the Soave Consorzio represents nearly 3,000 growers. But without such collective effort, farmers can change the rulebook all they like with only limited effect.
Cava offers a cautionary tale. Production of Spain’s sparkler – and Cava denominación de origen politics – is dominated by two behemoths, Freixenet and Codorníu. Freixenet’s wines are particularly lacklustre, but it alone makes roughly half of all Cava. All this has annoyed quality producers for years, driving multiple breakaways from the Cava DO, most significantly by Catalan growers calling themselves Corpinnat. Their tough rules stipulate that Corpinnat must be made from organic, hand-harvested grapes, aged for at least 18 months – and so on. But on export markets at least, Spanish bubbles’ image is still driven by 100 million-plus bottles a year of Freixenet’s dull fizz.
When a collective effort and rulebook changes work, it’s impressive. Last week I tested this theory to destruction in a modest West Country restaurant – and yes, the 2025 Maison Bretonnière Muscadet turned out to be a pleasant glass of wine. Twenty years ago, I suspect not. What’s more, Muscadet crus remain seriously underpriced, most at around £20 or less UK retail. But I can sympathise if makers of underrated wines elsewhere in Europe – Spain’s Terra Alta, Portugal’s Bairrada, the best of Italy’s Abruzzo – look wistfully towards the Swartland or Sonoma as they contemplate grappling with the wine bureaucrats.
Photo by Dietmar Becker on Unsplash; Andy Neather blogs at https://aviewfrommytable.substack.com/