France makes serious (?) attempts to cut down its large state and municipal administration. One step has been to merge a number of regions. This merger took effect on January 1st, 2016. France had previously 22 regions. These have now, after many heated discussions, merged into 13. And now the merged regions are supposed to have new names. I bet there will be more heated discussions.
For the wine regions, this means for example that the Champagne-Ardenne, Lorraine and Alsace are now one administrative region, having previously been three. Aquitaine (with Bordeaux) and Poitou-Charente (with Cognac) has become one gigantic region as has Midi-Pyrénées (wines of the South-West) and Languedoc-Roussillon. The 13 new regions are
- Alsace Champagne-Ardenne Lorraine
- Aquitaine Limousin Poitou-Charentes
- Auvergne Rhône-Alpes
- Bretagne
- Bourgogne Franche-Comté
- Centre Val de Loire
- Corsica
- Languedoc-Roussillon Midi-Pyrénées
- Normandie
- Nord-Pas-de-Calais Picardie
- Ile-de-France (Paris)
- Pays de la Loire
- Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
For a map of the new regions, click here gouvernement.fr
