AOC

An "appellation" is just an identifying name or title, but it has also come to be known as a system of protection to identify where a product is made or grown. For example, Idaho potatoes or Maine lobsters, which carry a set of expectations.

This is nothing new -- the Bible references wine of Samaria, Carmel, Jezreel, and Helbon -- but until the 19th century, it was just a convention, not a law.  In 1891, the treaty of Madrid gave legal protection to sparkling wine produced in Champagne, France.  Thus, you won't see the word "champagne" on a bottle of California sparkling wine.

In 1935, the French formalised this as the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, or AOC. In 1951, the European Union extended it.  Today, it applies to wines, cheeses, hams, sausages, seafood, olives, beers, Balsamic vinegar and even regional breads, fruits, raw meats and vegetables.

On the face of it, this seems like a good idea: If an area becomes associated with a particular product, you wouldn't want others to be able to claim their product was from the same region, right?  It's the same as trademark law -- if any IT company could call themselves "Apple," how would the Apple brand fare?

However, as with all things, whenever government protection is involved, things quickly become ridiculous.  I was intrigued by a news story yesterday that Britain now has 50 products of "protected designation of origin," the latest being Newmarket sausages.  Newmarket is a small town (pop. 15,000) in Suffolk that is more commonly associated with thoroughbred horse racing.  However, it has the distinction of two local sausage makers, who use two completely different recipes to produce two distinctly different sausages, and yet somehow the fact that they were both from Newmarket was enough to make "Newmarket sausage" a protected designation.  (Obviously I haven't tried them, but the "rate my sausage" blog doesn't give them high marks, anyway.)

In another example, "Newcastle Brown Ale" -- which was a trademark of a particular brewery -- was given protected status in 2000, but in 2004 the company moved the brewery to Gateshead, literally on the other side of the river, and had to petition the European Union to revoke the protected designation!  So just to recap, before the protection was granted only one company was allowed to create Newcastle Brown Ale, and if the protection hadn't been revoked then no companies would have been allowed to make Newcastle Brown Ale.

Cheddar cheese, by all rights, should be allowed protected designation -- after all, it originated in the town of Cheddar, in Somerset, around the 12th century, and there are still a number of artisan cheesemakers in the area -- but it was considered to be too "generic" to be given protected status.  (However, cheddar produced from local milk within four counties of South West England may use the protected name, "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar.")

"Buffalo mozzarella campagna" does have protected status in Europe (it must be made from the milk of water buffalo raised in Lazio and Campania, Italy) but not the rest of the world.  (And don't get me started on that low-moisture cow's milk product produced in the US and labelled "mozzarella"...)

Obviously these sorts of restrictions are just silly; if you're going to have the government enforcing appellations, the obvious solution would be to put a blanket restriction on geographic references; hence Parma ham has to come from Parma, and Darjeeling tea has to come from Darjeeling.  However, there was a bit of scandal a few years ago when the winner of the annual Cornish pasty competition did, in fact, come from the county of Devon, next door.  The rules were changed so only residents of Cornwall could complete, and then the following year Cornish pasties were given protected status, so even if the best cornish pasty came from Devon, they are now prohibited from calling them "Cornish pasties."  Of course, that's exactly what these laws do, reduce competition, regardless of whether it is better or worse than the original.

Today there are 1,123 products with various protected designation status in the EU.  Here is the full list of British products.  Of the 50, I recognise 8.  That is, less than 20% of these products with government protectional actually have enough of a brand presence to differentiate themselves from similar products from other locations.  (I don't even know what a "perry" is.)

Beer
    Kentish ale
    Kentish strong ale
    Rutland bitter

Cooked meat
    Cornish Pasty
    Traditional Cumberland Sausage
    Newmarket sausage
    Melton Mowbray pork pie

Cheese
    Beacon Fell traditional Lancashire cheese
    Bonchester cheese
    Buxton blue
    Dorset Blue cheese
    Dovedale cheese
    Exmoor Blue cheese
    Single Gloucester
    Staffordshire Cheese
    Swaledale cheese
    Stilton - White cheese
    Stilton - Blue cheese
    Swaledale ewes' cheese
    Teviotdale cheese
    West Country farmhouse Cheddar cheese

Cider and Perry
    Gloucestershire cider
    Gloucestershire perry
    Herefordshire cider
    Herefordshire perry
    Worcestershire cider
    Worcestershire perry

Cream
    Cornish Clotted Cream

Fish
    Arbroath Smokies
    Cornish Sardines
    Lough Neagh Eel
    Scottish Farmed Salmon
    Traditional Grimsby smoked fish
    Whitstable Oysters

Fresh meat
    Gloucestershire Old Spots
    Isle of Man Loaghtan Lamb
    Lakeland Herdwick
    Orkney beef
    Orkney lamb
    Scotch beef
    Scotch lamb
    Shetland lamb
    Traditional farmfresh turkey
    Welsh Beef
    Welsh lamb
    West Country Lamb
    West Country Beef

Fruit and Vegetables
    Armagh Bramleys
    Jersey Royal potatoes
    Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb