Selecting a wine to compliment your meal can heighten your dining experience. Knowing which wines go with which meals is a fairly simple task to learn. White wines with fish, pasta and poultry, and red wines with meat. Armed with this knowledge, you confidently stride into the wine shop and are faced with an array of white and red wines. You weren’t prepared for so many choices and you don’t know where to begin, because you don’t know a Pinot Grigio from a Chardonnay. You wonder where Tuscany is, and is it any different than the Napa Valley.
Selecting a wine can be overwhelming unless you know how to read a wine label. Though there are slight variances between wine labels from the United States and wine labels from Europe, it is fairly simple. A wine label may consist of up to eight parts. In no particular order, they are as follows:
1. Wine Name - European (France, Italy and Spain) wine names and the region of origin are one in the same. There are some exceptions such as Domaine De Grachies, a French wine from Cotes de Gascogne, France.Wines from North America, South America and Australia place emphasis on the grapes and the vineyard in their name.
2. Wine Type – The wine type will tell you one or two things. It will inform you of the color, such as red wine, white wine or rose. In the United States, the wine must contain seventy five percent of a grape type to be labeled as such. The second revelation is of functional use, such as red table wine or white cooking wine.
3. Appellation or Growing Region – European wines carry their region of origin as part of their name. There are exceptions (see #1). American wines will list the growing region right before the name of the wine such as Napa Valley Chardonnay.
4. Variety – Also known as varietal content, variety refers to the type of grape used in the wine production. French and Italian wine labels will not have this part because they are required to make their wine from only two traditional grape types. European wines must contain eighty five percent of one grape type, and American wines must contain seventy five percent of one grape type.
5. Vintage – The vintage refers to the harvesting year. The harvest year is the year the grapes were harvested, not the bottling year. Eighty five percent of the wine must be from that harvest year to be claimed on the bottle.
6. Producer – At the top or middle of the label you will find the manufacturer or producer. European producer’s names consist of surnames and houses. France has chateaus and domains. Italy, Germany and Spain have Estates.
7. Alcohol Content – On the bottom left hand corner of the wine label you will find a number between seven and fourteen. This represents the alcohol content percentage. United States standards have a minimum of seven percent and a maximum of fourteen percent. The exception is sherry with a standard alcohol content between seventeen and twenty percent.
8. Bottle Volume – In the bottom right hand corner of the wine label you will find the bottle volume. The classic wine bottle is 1.5 liters. You may also find it displayed as 750 milliliters.
Some wines have all eight of these components, and some have only a few. Once you have them mastered, your wine experience will be enhanced in the restaurant as well as the wine shop. Imagine a sommelier bringing a bottle of wine for your approval, and you being able to confidently accept or reject it according to its label? Your knowledge will both impress your guests and enhance your dining experience.
