When any old wine has a DOCG...

What good is having a DOCG?

Don't know if anyone has been keeping up lately, but the flurry of DOCGs over the past couple of years in Italy is getting ridiculous.

Typical of the Italians though: they overwhelm the DOC system, and strip it of most of its value. So they create a DOCG category---and proceed to totally discredit that as well.

In marketing parlance: create a "brand", then destroy the brand you just created.

(If you want to know what this fuss is all about, google Alfonso Cevola's blog. He keeps an updated list of DOCGs; which, frankly, isn't easy.)

[Robin Garr]

Did you mean this for the Wine Forum, Hoke? I can move it ...

Did you mean this for the Wine Forum, Hoke? I can move it ...

Guess it fits better over there, Yeah, go ahead, Robin.

Agreed a bit of a farce, though the awarding of DOCG has sometimes also had a political element as well, so it got on a slippery slope very quickly.

Plus the likes of Gaja who stick their noses up at DOCG and embrace lowly Langhe Rosse for some very serious wines. Chianti led the way before that.

I respect the idea of preserving the traditions, whilst allowing producers to develop new 'traditions' (i.e. let them make a new styke under a new name). In that sense I see IGT (or IGP if the EU get their way) just as important as DOC/DOCG (c.f. DOP).

Ian: IGT is definitely a boon to the Italian wine biz. It allows both experimentation and focus on regional and autochthonos varieties, with which Italy is particularly rich.

And you're right, of course, since in Italy you can't avoid the politics of the country and the DOC authorities. We all knew it was going to happen; that still doesn't detract from the pain of watching a vinous train wreck occuring.

Curiously enough, Chianti has actually removed itself from my central pantheon of Italian wines, what with all the changes that have occurred there, many of them taking the wine producers further and further away from what Chianti originally was, and effectively creating at least three entirely different tiers of wine: the Normale, the DOC/Classico style, twisted out of all shape with new varieties allowed; and the cult Rossos. (Plus mucking up an international treasure like Brunello.)

I do still like some of the non-chianti Tuscans, and a small handful of the more traditional makers...but my interest in Italy is much more alive in the Piedmont, Trentino/Alto Adige, Friuli, Veneto, Lombardy, and Campania these days. When I think "Italian", that's where I automatically think of. Not, unfortunately, Tuscany.

I do still like some of the non-chianti Tuscans, and a small handful of the more traditional makers...but my interest in Italy is much more alive in the Piedmont, Trentino/Alto Adige, Friuli, Veneto, Lombardy, and Campania these days. When I think "Italian", that's where I automatically think of. Not, unfortunately, Tuscany.

Feel about the same way, Hoke. Luckily for us, there are many Italys...

It's inevitable that some people will expect DOCG wines to be better than DOC, but was that ever the point with DOCG? I thought the G bit merely offered a guarantee - in the sense that these wine are all tasted and analysed. I'd imagine that principally restricts DOCG to wines that can afford this additional overhead. Typically these woud be top quality wines, or wines with huge production (Asti DOCG, anyone?).l

From Wikipedia: Many other countries have based their controlled place name systems on the French AOC classification. Italy's Denominazione di Origine Controllata and Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita and the United States' American Viticultural Areas are both systems that followed the model set by the French AOC.

The key point reflects your comment about brand identification. If you position your product properly, you own it. Others can try to steal the identification for themselves, but it will never work. There is only one slot in the brain for each brand position. Can anything but Coke be the real thing? No. Can there be another The King besides Elvis? No. Even the great Ali had to step over to The Greatest for a brand identification to stick. He could have said he was The King, but nobody would have believed him.

So it is with the concept of controlled place name systems, a type of brand itself. There is the AOC and then the also ran’s. No classification for any other country will ever mean much of anything.

I know this thread was moved. But I am somewhat nervous about going anywhere near the Wine Forum. There are too many serious people over there.

DISCLAIMER: It's odd that The King didn't stick for Jesus.

Surely the point is that the AOC system applies in France, the DOC in Italy, and the DO in Spain. If I am drinking Italian wine, the French AOCs are irrelevent, and vice versa. I do not regard French wines as superior to Italian because they are AOC. Also, I have never regarded AOC or DOC(G) as being a brand per se - the brands for me are Bordeaux, Barolo, Asti etc.

The Italians may have made mistakes - the main one is probably having far too many different DOCs - but the French system is far from perfect. it seems to be mired in local politics, rather than being consumer focussed. Examples of issues commonly cited are the failure to provide information about the grape variety used, the devaluation of the usage of "Grand Cru" in Alsace, the broadening of the geographical boundaries of Champagne, and there are doubtless more.

If I were concerned about brand dilution I would be far more concerned about the Italians dropping Spumante from the most downmarket wine sweet sparkling wine, so now the name of the Asti area alone is the name of its apellation; not the fact that Asti is DOCG. I doubt it does serious producers of Barbera d'Asti any favours. But I suppose it is not for me to worry about really.