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France shares with Italy and Spain the character of a complete wine country. Grapes are grown in more than half the departments, or coun-ties, of metropolitan France.
A million hectares of vineyard -or 2,470,000 acres - contribute their grapes to the French harvest. This area is smaller than it used to be, but the average annual production of more than 60 million hl, or 666 mil-lion cases puts France into sec-ond - and sometimes first - place among the wine lands of the world. Only Italy makes more wine.
More than 30% of French wine is entitled to an appellation d'origine con-trolee (AOC). The structure of French wine law is described below, but the dominance of AOC wine is relatively new, and points out an interesting trend in French wine. Much less wine is drunk today than it was even 30 years ago. France's average consump-tion per head is now around 67 litres a year, down from 140 litres in 1954. However, much more of what is drunk today is now quality wine.
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