Abstract
The phylloxera crisis, which started in the 1870s, coincided with a wine shortage period as well as winemaking innovations and wine diversification. This increased variability of wine products was perceived as harmful because it impeded the acknowledgement of wine quality. The French authorities struggled to contain the variability of wine products and their many subcategories. Numerous legislative initiatives took place: the idea of origin was first interpreted as a traceability link to the vineyard and later, with the 1935 law on Controlled Denominations of Origin (fr. AOC) was perceived as heritage, mirroring superior taste-quality, which required constraining the vintners’ wine-growing and wine-making practices. Different interpretations of the notion of heritage led to a new heterogeneity in the quality of wines originating from the AOCs, and disputes about terroir quality persist in modern times. This chapter explores the notion of terroir beyond its interpretation as a simple resource and notes that these perceived incompatible interpretations should coexist and be reconciled.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Brunori and Rossi (2007).
- 4.
- 5.
Ilbery et al. (2005).
- 6.
See Callon and Latour (1981) for fundamental pioneering work on Science and Technology Studies (STS).
- 7.
Latour (1983).
- 8.
See the economic theory of information asymmetry and the seminal article by Akerlof (1970), for whom this real quality stems from a “real” knowledge of goods. But this “real” quality can also be seen as “conventional”, in other words as the result of a social agreement on objects Eymard-Duvernay (1989), Eymard-Duvernay (2006a, b), Young (1996).
- 9.
- 10.
As commercial brands have been studied extensively Di Palma (2014).
- 11.
- 12.
Many consumers were likely also concerned about this situation, but they left virtually no direct traces in the archives.
- 13.
I prefer to talk of variability and not of “uncertainty regarding quality”, like Lamine (2005) for example, as the idea of uncertainty implies that a more or less hidden or concealed “real” quality exists, when the object of disputes surrounding regulation is to determine the modalities of existence of commodities with their acceptable variability, regardless of any “truth” about what they are.
- 14.
See Stanziani (2003b).
- 15.
1824 Law completed by the 1857 Law.
- 16.
Legal experts say “manufactured”, but this term could cause confusion if used in a different way to winemakers and merchants. That is why we prefer the term “elaborate”.
- 17.
The term “origin” is understood not in geographical terms, but as the production unit from which the wine comes.
- 18.
The Champagne appellation played a driving and decisive role in the reinforcement of the legal interpretation. E. Clémentel described the stages of this journey towards turning appellations of origin into wine “law”:
“On 12 July 1845, the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation had to rule on a trial against wine merchants from Touraine who had affixed the name of the widow Clicquot and those of Ay and Verzy on bottle corks. The court considered that this constituted personation under Article 1 of the 28 July 1824 law.
In 1847, the civil appeal court of the Court of Cassation ruled that owners and winegrowers were entitled to the protection of this law for wines coming from their harvests.
On 4 March 1870, the Court of Angers recognized the merit of legal proceedings instituted by owners of the Ay, Bouzy and Sillery winegrowers and by merchants who purchased their products, against merchants from another region who sold champanized wines in the Anjou under these names. On 19 July 1887, the same Court ruled that the appellation “Champagne” had to be reserved for wines from and produced in the Champagne region.
On 11 April 1889, it declared that the fraudulent indication of the word Champagne for wine that had not been produced and harvested in the Champagne region constituted an offence provided for and punished by Article 1 of the 28 July 1824 law. It considered that Champagne or Champagne wine should be considered as wine both harvested and produced in Champagne, an old province of France […] on 26 July 1889, the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal lodged against this decision.
Finally, on 18 November 1892, through the adoption of motives, the Court of Paris confirmed a judgement by the Reims commercial court on 17 July 1891 […]: ‘it follows that since the designation of Champagne or Champagne wine does not fall under the public domain, it cannot apply to sparkling wine that is not from Champagne’…” Clémentel (1914).
- 19.
For a detailed account of the elaboration and then implementation of this law, which P.-A. Dessaux said was “probably largely adopted because it offered a general framework for the protection of wine appellations”, see Dessaux (2006). Note however that the analysis is more focused on the “substantial qualities” of commodities than on the question of appellations of origin.
- 20.
Wolikow (2009).
- 21.
Torre (2002) developed a utilitarian economic analysis of AOC’s reputation as a “club” common good. For J. Capus, the common good was not reputation but the name of origin, which included all interpretations and meanings of the term, whether material or not. He did not seek to regulate the use of words, just one of the procedures supporting reputation building: the quality check based on the product and the gustative experience of wine.
- 22.
I would like to thank P. Baudouin for sharing these documents with me.
- 23.
Yet others reject any constraint, such as those who argue that the determination of terroir quality is a natural determination, who received little attention in this article. But they do not do so in the name of a threat weighing on the long-term survival of appellations of origin.
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Teil, G. (2017). Protecting Appellations of Origin: One Hundred Years of Efforts and Debates. In: van Caenegem, W., Cleary, J. (eds) The Importance of Place: Geographical Indications as a Tool for Local and Regional Development. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53073-4_6
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