Furious French winemakers have forced officials to back down over controversial plans to ban a number of prestigious wines from calling themselves “burgundy”.
The region’s producers saw red over proposed changes relating to which bottles can be labelled as coming from the region.
A committee of experts had been due to meet on Thursday to vote on a map that would have stopped vineyards from 64 communes, including those making chablis, from using the word “burgundy” on their labels. After meeting a delegation of angry producers, who are fiercely protective of the region’s traditions and reputation, the vote was postponed.
More than 400 burgundy wine producers had travelled to Montreuil on the outskirts of Paris to picket the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité (INAO)meeting. A spokesperson for the institute, a body of the ministry of agriculture, blamed a “panel of experts” for the contested proposal and said committee members would never have approved the new map.
The Bourgogne Wine Board (BIVB) welcomed what it said was a clear climbdown by the committee. “In December they presented us with this plan and told us it was that or nothing. Now they have back-pedalled,” a BIVB representative said. “The committee met local representatives and they have promised that the communes will not be taken out.”
She said the board was still concerned by a suggestion that all beaujolais wines would merit the burgundy label.
Winemakers are opposed to the institute allowing a number of vineyards producing beaujolais – traditionally considered to have its own appellation and whose nouveau reds are often dismissed as low quality, cheap and commercial – to acquire the coveted bourgogne appellation. The label, a mark of quality, means producers can charge more for their wines.
“Some of the beaujolais cru can call themselves burgundy but we are worried about moves to include all of them. An influx of new burgundy labels would have economic consequences,” the BIVB representative said.
The INAO had been working on a new map after a previous attempt to redraw it in 2014 was thrown out by the state council.
Burgundy has its own appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC), a protected designation of origin awarded to wine, cheese and other foods produced from a particular natural environment and under certain growing conditions and production methods considered to give a distinctive taste.
The burgundy AOC is an umbrella label that covers about a hundred smaller and more specific AOCs, including the white-wine-producing Chablis region. The INAO says many of the prestigious chablis vineyards have given up using the burgundy appellation and prefer their own. Beaujolais, administratively part of Burgundy, is regarded in winemaking as individual enough to use its own appellation.
The redrawn map threatened to result in communes around Dijon, in the Côte-d’Or region – which produces crémant de bourgogne, a high-quality sparkling wine, and chablis – being banned from using the burgundy AOC. The area covers 7,000 hectares (17,297 acres), 5,500 hectares of which are vineyards
While Burgundy claims to be France’s oldest wine-producing region, citing evidence of pre-Roman Celtic vines, the vineyards of Bordeaux enjoy a warmer climate and the quality of the wines produced, made of a blend of two or more grapes, is considered more reliable. Burgundy’s unpredictable climate means the quality of the wine, made just from the pinot noir grape for its most valued reds, varies.
Before meeting on Thursday, Gilles Flutet, the head of the institute’s territories and boundaries department, said any decisions would not be “set in stone” until a public consultation had taken place and insisted all appeals would be considered. He said the zones threatened with exclusion from the burgundy appellation were those, like chablis, that used it “very little”.
The burgundy union had disagreed, saying the institute was undermining the whole AOC structure. More than 6,000 people signed a petition opposing the proposed map.
“We must avoid conflating two historically distinct wine-growing regions, each with their own characteristics,” it wrote in a statement. “We must prevent this discrediting of the AOC system. If a beaujolais becomes a bourgogne, then why shouldn’t a crémant de bourgogne become a champagne?”
