Legal geographical indication (GI) regimes are increasingly considered a promising tool to protect cultural heritage from outside appropriation. Yet such regimes have origins in a much more specific context: the structures and practices of wine‐making in the elite wine regions of France. This article examines the relationships between different types of communities and structures involved in boundary‐making under the prototypical GI system, appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC), in its place of origin, Bordeaux. Here, legal boundaries are simultaneously reinforced, created, and defined by the values and priorities of the society that created them. In this article I consider geographical indications in Bordeaux not only as communal rights but as communal emanations, both to highlight the idiosyncrasies of AOC as a legal system and some of the problems and possibilities status suggests for the future of intellectual property rights.