European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 18, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                August 1985 the stars and stripes Page 17 a photo rheingau wine festival in Wiesbaden sticker is a gag alluding to current scandal Over Antifreeze adulterated wine in Austria and West Doctorin and then the wine by Frank Prial new York times each wine including the present one in Austria and West prompts a flurry of assurances from Industry leaders and government officials of whatever country is involved that it will not happen the formal announcement usually promises that the next session of the country legislature will pass airtight Laws that will Render this kind of chicanery which officials insist involves Only a handful of miscreants a thing of the within a year or two or there is another Are wine a particularly unscrupulous lot not but it is a business that lends itself to it is easy to doctor a wine not Only easy in Many necessary As Good wines Are All wine makers Are judged by their ability to select barrels and vats and create something that is More than the sum of its enology students Are routinely Given batches of problem wine and their skill in making it palatable is wine making begins with a Little doctoring for the the vines Are repeatedly treated with fertilizers and this kind of human intervention in the natural development of wine continues through a succession of where wines Are strengthened with sugar when they Are weak and adjusted with acid if they Are they Are stabilized with tinted with heavy red wine if they Are and made fizzy with Carbon dioxide if they Are supposed to the possibilities for Are Many and the modern history of wine is a history of the Effort to reduce those possibilities through self policing where possible and through government regulation where controls of some kind Are As old As wine effective Are another they Date from the end of the 19th the regulations and Laws Are constantly revised in country after country in a the number of wine scandals in recent years May be seen As a measure of the Laws while the increase in arrests May mean there is More it May also mean that the authorities Are More efficient and Are cracking Down on the regardless of ones interpretation of these Industry regulations still leave something to be the French Are the pioneers in modern wine after the phylloxera Plant lice damage to the vines in the 1870s and the vines in the South of France came Back sooner than those in the famous vineyards of Burgundy and so the southerners simply labelled their wines Burgundy and As a in the first Law was passed setting out specific or there were three for wine Bordeaux and Banuls and one for but establishing vintners geographic boundaries was not it came to a head when Champagne producers brought in cheap grapes and wine from outside the Region and the local growers rioted in in the methods of production and the materials used within an appellation were finally brought under the but even that regulatory scheme was wine makers were allowed to declare their own appellation if they met a few Basic and since appellation wines were exempt from harsh measures being imposed on cheaper wines in the Early nearly every winemaker in France made up an appellation for in appellation wines jumped from an average of 132 million Gallons for several previous harvests to 422 million the appellation Origine Law was clearly in the Institute National Des appellations Origine was it was to be an Industry institution charged by the French government with defining the regulations governing controlled appellations and with monitoring the Industry adherence to those since the regulations have been changed regularly to close loopholes As they the biggest problems involve the Institute sets specific amounts of wine that can be produced from appellation cont Rolee but Many growers routinely if they to increase the practice of adding sugar to fermenting wine to increase the alcoholic is expressly forbidden by the Institute in certain regions of but policing this Rule is also very most of the policing is performed by the French government for tax doctoring cheap wine to make it resemble the expensive brands is a dirty trick in the wine business it is a serious crime to the ministry of the tax people Are everywhere in the wine peering into vats and account phony wine is one thing tax evasion does appellation cont Rolee work yes and it has achieved wonders in defining what wines can be made there Are some 400 As the wine districts Are in France the kind of grapes that can be the number of acres that can be used and the amount of wine that can be produced the French Institute controls All this fairly and it does a Good Job of monitoring minor As when wine producers noted on bottles in tiny letters that their wine was a cheap blend from All Over France while trumpeting in giant characters that it was bottled in All such wines can use the name of the place of origin but can use Only the equivalent of the zip code to indicate where it was but there Are some things the French Institute cannot most serious among these is regulating despite stringent controls Over the vineyards of the Institute has been Able to do Little More than watch from the sidelines As the Quality of Burgundy wine has declined faced with soaring demand in recent years while coping with a series of poor or indifferent less scrupulous Burgundy producers have turned out much disappointing there have been signs of a but the Institute can take Only part of the it can determine Vineyard locations and Vine types and control but its Power ends where the Quality of the final product is some private groups of wine such As the growers of set their own standards of Quality by submitting their wines to tasting Italy has created a kind of super appellation to try to guarantee the Quality of italian wines but this is in Only limited Frances system of wine with All its is the Model for All perhaps its most important role is symbolic after it represents a National desire to make the French wine producing system As Good As it can possibly even if it does not always it is from the Consumers Point of to know that somebody is always