The 70-year-old AOC system is based on the near-mystical belief, unique to the French winemaking industry, that the identity of a wine stems exclusively from the precise field in which its grapes were grown -- the very Gallic, and increasingly unsustainable, notion of terroir.
This has given rise to an unholy jumble of 466 different appellations, all with their own rules governing everything from the precise geographical location (100 yards off and it's not the same wine) and the distance between the vines to the type of fertilizers and additives permitted, the method of harvesting (manual or machine), the bottling techniques and the size of the label.
Quality controls from one AOC to another are, to say the least, variable. One industry insider, who asked not to be named, reckons that "somewhere between 6 percent and 9 percent of all French AOC wines presently on the market are basically undrinkable," while probably a further 20 percent are "barely suitable for consumption in polite company."
The result, experts say, is that consumers are left facing a product of whose quality and reliability they can never be entirely sure, and which is offered under such a bewildering variety of names and labels that unless they really know their Macon Villages from their Passetoutgrains, they will rarely know what they are buying.
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