Growing wine and the act of wine-making does not boil down to expertise alone. There are often a thousand different varieties of grape, but there are also rules and regulations about how these grapes most be grown. These are particularly complex with regards to old world wine. By old world wine we are referring to wine from countries such as France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Romania.
The laws that govern how these wines are produced come under the European framework of the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). These systems have individual enforcement bodies from country to country.
Let us examine, France, which is by far the largest old world country for wine. The system by which grapes can be grown in France is controlled by the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) and Vin de Pays.
Bordeaux is the largest and most prominent wine-producing region in France. The region covers the city of Bordeaux and the Gironde. This totals 120,00 hectares of wine-producing land. Of the wine produced in Bordeaux, a large majority of it is red – or Claret as it is often referred to. Overall, there can be up to 700 million bottles of wine produced in Bordeaux in any given vintage. This staggering number comes courtesy of over 8,500 châteaux.
While red wine accounts for roughly 89 per cent of Bordeaux’s wine output, the remainder is comprised of sweet white wines and dry white wines. Both rosé and sparkling wine are produced in much smaller quantities here.
