(Eater) - Last month, a new Southern Rhône wine appellation was born—or, rather, its status was elevated. After 10 years of organizing and lobbying the INAO, the government administration that regulates France's regional wine designations, the village of Cairanne is now celebrating its upgraded cru status, which commences with the 2015 vintage. In France, it takes eight full years of administrative procedure to demonstrate that a village deserves a higher rank. But once achieved, for winemakers, it promises a better image of the terroir they love dearly, and stronger sales for their wines, which can fetch better prices.

The French appellation system was developed in the mid-1930s as a way to preserve terroir, a confluence of soil, grape varieties, and tradition—basically to ensure that wines of quality remained as such. Appellations in France are ranked on a multi-tiered ladder that varies by region, which, to a casual drinker, can seem quite complicated. Since this system was initiated, appellations have been continuously forged throughout France, the basic idea being that a region needs to prove its winemaking and soil deserve recognition. With its focus on terroir and winemaking practices, France's appellation system has long served as a model for geographical wine indication throughout the Old World.

The Rhône Valley’s appellation system starts on the most basic level with the ubiquitous Côtes du Rhône label, typically red blends made of grapes from a wide geographic spectrum, and generally of average quality from anywhere in the Rhône Valley. One tier up is Côtes du Rhône-Villages wines, focused on a more specific geographic area, but not yet recognized as the top quality in the region. Then, there are the cru wines (cru translates to growth), which hold the status of appellation communale, a limited area with specific rules about vinification. These wines are judged to be from the best vineyards and to bear the deepest, most observable expression of terroir. In the Rhône, there is a division between the South, where wines are typically a blend, and the North, where reds are 100 percent syrah and whites are 100 percent viognier.

Cairanne is a village whose wines were, until recently, considered Cotes du Rhône-Villages, but now with its elevated status, Cairanne has become an appellation communale. "We did it by focusing on the quality of the wines and of the terroir, as well as the unanimous passion of the winemakers," explains Denis Alary, a winemaker whose family has been in Cairanne since the 17th century. "My family has been talking about this for forty years," he continues. "But it was a very complicated job."

As president of the Syndicat des Vignerons de Cairanne, an association comprising 37 winegrowers in private wineries and three cooperative wineries in Cairanne, Alary led the effort to lobby for the region's cru status. This involved, first of all, a delineation of the very best terroir. As well, wines that receive the cru appellation status can only be harvested by hand, not machine (hand harvesting, in general, is practiced by smaller estates producing higher-quality wine, as opposed to large-scale wineries). There are also rules limiting how much sulfur (a preservative) a winemaker can add to his/her juice. In other words, some of Cairanne’s winemakers may have to change their winemaking ways if they want a higher status label on their bottles.