Wine Labels

“Anyone who tries to make you believe that he knows all about wines is obviously a fake.”

― Leon Adams, The Commonsense Book of Wine

There are 24,000 names for varieties of wine grapes. Ampelographers (scientists who identify and describe different vines) believe these represent about 5,000 truly different grapes. The good news is that only nine are considered classic varieties. The whites include; chardonnay; chenin blanc; riesling; sauvignon blanc; and sémillion. The reds include; cabernet sauvignon; merlot; pinot noir; and syrah.

In the USA, it's quite common to find the name of the grape on the wine label. This is a big help to the consumer.  If you like Chardonnay, all you have to do is choose among 40-50 different brands you find on the shelf. European wines (especially French and German) are more likely to label wines with the geographical region listed rather than the grape variety.

Here's a US wine label:

It tells me the name of the winery, the variety of the grape, and where it was produced.

Now here's a French wine label.

How am I suppose to know that this bottle contains wine made from chardonnay grapes? Also, it's difficult for non-French speakers to pronounce some of the words. The good news is that there's a great site called Forvo where their motto is "All the words in the world pronounced." You can practice with pouilly fuisse and Puligny-Montrachet.

We will talk about wine videos on youtube in an upcoming wine post. I highly recommend Karen MacNeil's, The Wine Bible. This is a very readable (900 pages) book on all aspects of wine. I've seen the used book for sale on Amazon for around $5.00 including shipping.