Should one use grape variety or place name to describe a wine on its label?

I know that this is an old debate and may seem a bit worn out to some of us professionals, but I believe it is in fact totally pertinent to most consumers. Just because we (as wine pros) may be able to name maybe one hundred grape varieties does not mean that a consumer can name more than two or three. And the same goes for appellations. So it seems to me that combining the two on a label, as the odd French appellation and many Italian ones do, is one of the simplest and best ways of gradually extending education about some basic concepts in wine.

Before any of you hard-and-fast terroirists out there start getting hot under the collar about a perfidious « anglosaxon attitude » which, you seem to think, in some way degrades the supposed « nobility » of your treasured place names, I would hasten to say that I do not believe that naming a grape variety on a wine label in any way suffices to  resume or explain its flavours. On the other hand, the place of origin hardly does a more convincing job in this respect, as any wide tasting of a single appellation will show.

Wine, being a complex product, is a result of combined climatic, agricultural and wine-making factors, just as much as it also owes quite a lot to the variety (or varieties) of grape that go to make it. The name of a place alone is quite insufficient to describe the finer details of a wine’s style, and even its type. And, you may notice, I have not even mentioned the word « quality », whatever that is taken to mean. Concerning the matter of type there are many cases where a single place name is used to describe wines of very varying types. An example? Well Vouvray can be sparking, dry, off-dry, semi-sweet or very sweet. You may answer that there are specific mentions that, as footnotes, give one some idea of the type of the wine in this case. True to a point. But I recently tasted a Vouvray that was far from dry and which had no mention at all of this sweetness on its label. Examples of this confusion also abound in Alsace, even if some producers there are trying to introduce a kind of sweetness indicator on back labels.

A few years ago I attended a symposium on the sauvignon blanc variety that was (very well) organised in Austria. I should add that Austria has less than 500 hectares of this grape, but the organisers managed to assemble experts on the subject from all over the world for 3 days of excellent lectures and tastings in Graz, whereas France, supposedly the original home of Sauvignon blanc, has never managed anything of the kind, although the Sauvignon blanc concours in Bordeaux, which has just had its 2^nd edition, is perhaps a beginning. During discussions with some colleagues from the far side of the world, I learnt that not all of them (and they were wine professionals) knew that Sancerre is made with sauvignon blanc. For them, the benchmark for Sauvignon blanc is New Zealand, and particularly the Marlborough region, NOT France. Now Sancerre is an appellation that sells quite well. No major problems on the horizon and prices keep rising. So why change anything ? Well, I think that one needs to take a longer-term view of things here, and in particular not look down on the vast majority of the world’s wine consumers for whom grape variety is a more pertinant and easy-to-remember key into wine than place. I also recall, a few years ago, a chenin blanc competition held at the Abbaye de Fontevraud and from which the producers of Vouvray were strangely absent. Apparently their attitude went something like this: « we produce Vouvray, not chenin blanc ». How snooty can you get?

The net result of this kind of stubbornness is that these appellations surely miss out on possible sales in most markets outside of France. I would dearly love for someone to explain to me why they consider that mentioning a grape variety on the label, alongside or after the place name, is in any way degrading for the wine in question. Surely it is just another piece of factual information that can only increase the chances that someone will want to try that wine, beacause they are far more likely to have heard of chenin blanc than Vouvray, or sauvignon blanc than Sancerre? I have even seen Sancerre listed on wine lists in some countries in a different section from sauvignon blancs!

A compromise on this issue has been reached for a number of years in the case of several top Californian wines, for exemple. When, and this is clearly true at the top end of the market, a wine's precise origin is of great importance in its identity, both in terms of flavour and brand, then the place is mentioned first, with the grape variety (or varieties) sometimes being present in smaller type at the bottom of the label. A good example is shown in this pictire of Ridge Montebello. It is hard to see, but the varieties and their proportions are listed at the bottom of the label. This is considered to be useful information for Ridge's consumers, not some form of debasement for a wine that ranks with the finest in the world.

Now I am not stupid enough to believe that La Romanée Conti would increase its attractiveness by putting the words pinot noir on its labels. We are obviously talking about a very different niche of the market for such wines. But many appellations, whose prices are far more modest and whose cellars are not exactly empty, could clearly benefit from a little elementary thought about what possibly guides a consumer to take a bottle off a shelf or wine list and try it. It should be evident to them that the seemingly endless multiplication of French wine appellations is no answer to this question. The continuing dwindling of the market share for French wines should also cause them to question their current habits and convictions. Go west (or east), young man!

David Cobbold