Good French Wines - Map of Wines in France
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French AC Wines.
French wines continue to serve as the classic against which modern wines worldwide are evaluated. France now produces the most wine by value in the world (although Italy rivals it by volume and Spain has more land under cultivation for wine grapes). French wines have over 100 different terroirs, which is a huge variety of different conditions where grapes are grown.Wine Lingo.
Appellation Controlee (AC or AOC) is the top grade of French. AC is a part of the law in France that guarantees that a wine comes from where the label says it does, that it is made from specific grapes and that it is produced in a certain way.Next grade is VDQS (Vin Delimitee de Qualite Superieure) which you don't see very much these days, in shops in France at least.
The next grades are Vin de Pays, which guarantees that the wine comes from a particular area, and (lastly) Vin de Table which is French - no other guarantee.
Terroir, at its simplest, means "soils", but winemakers use it to refer to the differing types of soil, climate, drainage and position of a vineyard.
The whole system guaranteed some kind of quality, but in a traditional environment where production methods were not particularly advanced.
Modern methods (such as more sterile production conditions; rapid harvesting whereby grapes are pressed before they have a chance to deteriorate in the sun, and so on) have been adopted unevenly, which means that innovators can produce better french wine than traditionalists. In broad terms the Languedoc-Roussillon area in the south has come up in the world.
Use our routes and directions to plan your holiday, visit the vineyards and taste wines with the people who made them and pick up a few cases at low French prices.
Picking Quality French wine
Take a look at this page on choosing good French wine. Here are some simple rules for picking out quality wines - and we don't mention price even once.Regions
France is one of the oldest wine-producing regions of Europe. There are many recognized wine growing regions in France, spanning north to south and east to west. Regions in the south were licensed by the Roman Empire to produce wines and we have visited caves south of Saumur in the Loire valley which were claimed to be Roman.Alsace, Beaujolais, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, the Loire Valley, and the Rhone Valley and Languedoc-Roussillon are the big hitters with a myriad of vineyards sprinkled throughout the country. The Maps are derived from Google geocoding who, God Bless 'em - have even coded some of the AC's which are focussed on an area rather than a place. The maps are not complete yet (this notice will be removed when I think they are).
