Every label tells a story

Acouple of weeks ago, I wrote that learning about wine starts with developing your ability to taste. One of those steps involved looking at the bottle's label as you pensively down that first sip. But what exactly should you be looking for, and is that information even there?

I am afraid that most often it is not, and this frustrates me to no end. Labels, a place where the rest of the food and beverage world are legally obliged to precisely list the ingredients that go into making the product, more often than not say very little about the wine in the bottle. To be fair, labels are getting better, and countries like Australia do an exceptional job. But for most part, wine labels do not always tell you the whole story.

So here's what to look for and the little idiosyncrasies of the wine label.

The title

Much like buying a book, the first thing I look for is the wine's "title"- What is it? For New World wines, the main grape varietal will often be front and centre. I say "main grape," because labelling laws vary from country to country. In California, for a wine to be labelled as a single varietal, like cabernet sauvignon for example, it need only contain 75 per cent of that grape. Australian law, in contrast, maintains that every grape used in the blend be written on the label.

European wines will rarely use the grape varietal as the main focus of the label. Rather, they tend to favour place of origin. So it might say Rioja, Bordeaux or Chianti. Why the difference?

I have had many heated discussions with European winemakers about this. Their resistance to varietal labelling is tied to their belief that the terroir - that mix of soil, climate and tradition - is more important than the grape or grapes that went into making the wine.

A few years back, I had lunch with a winemaker from Gevrey Chambertin. I asked him about the differences between his pinot noir from Burgundy and those from the New World. He smiled at me, and after an interminably long silence, said rather defiantly that he doesn't make pinot noir, he makes Gevrey Chambertin.

Hmmm. While I understand what he was getting at, albeit in rather pompous fashion, this presupposes that everyone knows that red Burgundy can only be made with pinot noir. And Burgundy is relatively easy as there is only one grape. The problem is in places like Corbières and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where more than 10 kinds of grapes are authorized.

A large part of the key to understanding wine involves knowing what we are drinking, and that means knowing what grapes go into making the wine. If my Napa Valley cabernet contains "x" percentage of merlot or petit verdot, I would like to know. Equally, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape dominated by grenache will be a different type of wine than one made mostly with syrah. We'll come back to this later on.

Provenance

The next thing I look for is who made the wine, and where is it from. Every winemaker, much like an author, will have a distinct style. You might have drunk a wine from Penfolds or Château Ollieux Romanis or Fetzer - and maybe you liked it. With so many wines available, I often buy the wines from wineries that have made wines that I have appreciated in the past. Try to remember who made your wine!