The Name Game in French <i> Vin</i>

When Philippe Raoux bought an old chicken farm among the venerable Bordeaux wine estates here, the neighbors barely raised an eyebrow. Even when he got rid of the chickens and began producing an interesting little red wine, no one complained.

But when Raoux suggested that part of his vineyard, officially in the Haut-Medoc region, deserved to be part of the more prestigious Margaux region, well, then the grapes hit the fan.

Most of the Margaux growers refused to speak to him. He appealed to France’s top wine regulators, the National Institute of Appellations of Origin, offering historical documents and soil studies to prove his case. They turned him down.

Raoux’s decade-long war with the wine establishment finally ended a few months ago, when, to regulators’ embarrassment, France’s highest appeals court sided with him. The judges ordered the appellations institute--which determines regional names for wines based on soil quality and grape varieties--to reclassify 150 of his acres as Margaux. And, anticipating obstinacy, they vowed to assess a $1,600-a-day fine if it refused.

Now, like it or not, Raoux’s vineyard, Chateau d’Arsac, is a member of the Margaux elite. For Raoux, that means more than simple prestige. It increases both the value of his property and the selling price of his wine. His battle, like all such wars in the vineyards, was about more than pride. It was about business.

“Of course my neighbors aren’t too happy,” he said recently, savoring a glass of his first “Margaux,” the 1995 vintage, which will be bottled in 1997. “To fight and win against the administration, this is very rare in France.”

Rare, indeed, but also “stupid and ridiculous,” sputtered Jean-Henri Schyler, president of the Margaux wine growers association. “This cannot be done. It is unacceptable. If one person bypasses the system, then everybody can.”

In fact, Raoux has vaulted some of the most solidly constructed bureaucratic ramparts in France. For 60 years, the National Institute of Appellations has been the final word on French wine, designating vineyards by appellation to protect the industry from fraud and to assure consumers reliable quality.

French appellations, most of which are named after towns, are essentially regional, like those in the United States. But they are based on detailed scientific analysis of the soil and, unlike those in America, they control which grape varieties may be grown, when they can be watered and maximum yield.

For knowledgeable consumers, the French appellation is a guarantee of origin as well as of a wine’s particular taste. In general, the better the appellation, the more the wine costs.

But the French system, known as Appellation d’Origine Controlee, or AOC, is under fierce attack on many fronts. The AOC label is losing its credibility. And its troubles are a cautionary tale for other wine-growing regions, including the less geographically homogenous ones of California, that dream of making their appellation systems more useful to consumers by controlling grape varieties and other facets of production.

“Twenty years ago, an appellation meant something,” said Thierry Desseauve, editor of the Paris-based Revue du Vin de France. “But it doesn’t mean anything for anyone anymore. . . . It is no longer an asset but a detriment. And it’s time to rethink it.”

The system, launched in 1935 to protect wine producers from low-quality imitators, now includes 300 regional appellations, from Champagne to St. Emilion and Languedoc to Cotes du Rhone. Names are controlled by the producers, merchants and agriculture officials who make up the appellations institute. Until the courts intervened, the institute was a virtually unassailable final arbiter.

The amount of wine bearing the AOC label has almost doubled in 20 years, and appellations have tripled since the 1930s. At least some of the newer appellations have been created by politicians trying to impress their home-region voters, in a wine-barrel version of American pork-barrel politics.

A French consumer magazine recently criticized many AOC wines as poor and inconsistent. In an astonishing mea culpa, Alain Berger, the institute’s director, admitted that AOC wines are “sometimes undrinkable” and “occasionally scandalously bad.”

Berger has promised more rigorous testing. France’s official consumer standards body says it may introduce its own designation to single out the more reliable AOC wines.

Wine holds a special place in French life, and changes in the system are rare and always controversial. This country produces one-fourth of the wine consumed in the world. Its annual production--about 65 million bottles--is three times that of the United States.

But wine is more than big business. For millions of French, a table without wine is as bare as one without knives or forks. As France struggles to accept its diminished world status, its spectacular wines offer solid proof of its bountiful soil and its cherished heritage of savoir-vivre (living well) and savoir-faire (know-how).

In the world of wine, nowhere is more important or better known than Bordeaux, the southwestern region where Raoux challenged the industry heavyweights.

The reason is simple: the soil. Cataclysmic forces of nature, from monstrous rains in the Pyrenees to driving winds from the Atlantic Ocean, created a patch of land so full of tiny pebbles and sand that nothing could grow. Nothing, that is, except grapevines.

Since the Middle Ages, Bordeaux growers have known that the taste and quality of wines produced on neighboring soils are different. It is accepted as an article of faith here that while an incompetent grower may produce a bad wine on a good soil, no one can make a good wine on a bad soil.

Bordeaux’s noble wines are divided into several dozen appellations, each of which produces wine with a distinctive taste. Some, such as Margaux, St. Julien, Pauillac and St. Estephe, are known for having more than their share of great wines.

In the still-revered Great Ranking of 1855, a third of the 61 top Bordeaux wines came from the Margaux area. All of those Margaux wines were officially designated as Haut-Medoc until 1958, when the Margaux appellation was created. Now those, as well as other wines made on similar soils, have the right to carry Margaux on their labels.

When Raoux purchased Chateau d’Arsac in 1986, he saw his neighbors producing and selling ordinary Margaux wines for, on average, $18 a bottle, $3 more than his Haut-Medoc; Raoux began researching his property’s history.

At the time the Margaux appellation was created, he discovered, the owners of Chateau d’Arsac hadn’t been producing wine. He found evidence that the wines produced a century ago at Chateau d’Arsac, by a descendant of the great 16th century French essayist Montaigne, were considered on a par with Margaux. Raoux then commissioned an $80,000 soil study, which concluded that about one-fourth of his land was “highly similar to the conditions required to produce wines under the appellation Margaux.”

By rights, he figured, he was entitled to the Margaux appellation. But he knew that winning that concession from his neighbors would be a monumental task.

Raoux, like everyone else in the wine patch, knew the story of Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s 30-year quest to elevate the rank of his wine, Chateau Mouton Rothschild. The baron felt shortchanged by the 1855 Great Ranking, which divided the best Bordeaux wines of the day into five quality categories. For years, that ranking has been the most revered gauge of quality and a virtual guarantee of high price.

Chateau Mouton had been classified a second grand cru, meaning a second-rank great vintage. The eccentric baron devoted much of his life to seeing his wine become a first-rank great vintage. He cajoled and wined government officials and industry notables until, overcoming fierce local resistance, he won his promotion in 1973.

More typical, though, is the experience of Hubert Bouteillier, owner of Chateau Lanessan. His wine was left out of the Great Ranking because his great-great-grandfather didn’t send samples for tasting. He has long labored to persuade officials to make his wine a “great vintage.”

“I can’t fault the Great Ranking. It was well done,” he said recently. “But for how long must we bear the mistakes of our ancestors? I hope that one day we will make it. Maybe for my grandchildren.”

Raoux faced a similar task in trying to overcome the resistance of the Margaux growers. In a series of letters, he politely asked them to support his case. None answered.

“I was always looking for a compromise,” he said. “But I was totally naive.”

Then the National Institute of Appellations turned him down, setting up the court challenge.

“The Margaux growers made a big mistake,” said Bernard Ginestet, a noted wine historian in Margaux. “They should have just given Raoux a few acres and asked him to join the club. The quality of his soil is sufficient for a noble Margaux wine.

“But they got themselves a war,” added Ginestet, whose family once owned the premier Margaux vineyard, Chateau Margaux. “They were too busy trying to protect each other. I don’t want to be unpleasant, but they’re just a bunch of old fools.”

To the conservative Margaux growers, Raoux was, in a sense, a foreigner. A dapper, slightly built man of 42 with close-cropped golden hair, he is the scion of a family that lived for generations in Algeria, where it operated a wine wholesale business. After Algeria won independence from France in 1962, the family moved to Bordeaux.

Algerian-born French citizens such as Raoux are known as pieds noirs (black feet), and they have long been treated as second-class citizens. To make matters worse, Raoux’s ancestors worked with Algerian wine--viewed with disdain by French vintners.

When Raoux won his suit, a few of the Margaux growers grudgingly congratulated him, though they all stressed that they were congratulating “the man and not the result.” And they still scoff at his soil and his wine, contending it will water down the quality of the appellation.

“It is far from being good enough for Margaux,” said Schyler, the Margaux association president, whose family owns Chateau Kirwin, a highly respected grand cru wine.

One reason for the appellation’s vaunted reputation is Chateau Margaux. In the 1855 ranking, it was named the second-best wine in all of Bordeaux, and most of its wines today sell for more than $100 a bottle.

Paul Pontallier, director of Chateau Margaux, applauded Raoux for winning his battle, but he worries about the victory’s implications for the appellation system.

“I have a lot of respect and even admiration for him. He made it,” Pontallier said. “If his wine proves to be worth the Margaux appellation, it will sell well.”

But he sees the case as a devastating blow for the appellations institute: “This system of ours has worked extremely well for 60 years. But I’m worried that this court decision will cause problems.”

Marie-Helene Bienmayme, deputy director of the appellations institute, agrees.

So many other producers now want to be Margaux that the institute this month will consider taking the unusual step of reassessing the entire Margaux appellation. “Everyone in the wine industry will be concerned if that happens,” she said.

Raoux knows he must now produce an exceptional wine to counter the naysayers.

“We’ve been restored to our rightful place, and our goal now is to make one of the best Margaux wines,” he said. He says his wine from 1995, a year that experts say was the best in Bordeaux since 1990, “tastes just like a typical Margaux.”

Already, he is dreaming of the extra revenue. “When we start selling our Margaux, we might have enough money to restore the chateau,” he said.

Restoring relations with his neighbors will take more time. Animosities tend to linger in the vineyards of Bordeaux. “One thing I’ll never do,” Raoux vowed, “is join the Margaux wine growers association.”