fine wine
Know your Grand Cru fromyour Cru Bourgeois, your Reserva
fromyour Gran Reserva? Paolo Tullio offers a handy guide to
wine classifications in France, Spain and Italy, and chooses three Spanish reds to try
We are becoming much savvier when it comes to wines. Once upon a time the mere word ‘Château’ on a label caused many people to think that it meant there was a great wine inside the bottle. Now we know that this word, even if it’s accompanied by a drawing of a fine château, doesn’t really mean anything. Gold medals, often prominently displayed, don’t mean
a lot either these days. There are so many competitions for wine-makers that gold medals are now ten-a-penny. Up until recently, a heavy bottle was quite a good test of the quality of the wine – the heavier the bottle, the bet- ter the wine. But just as we were getting used to this quick and easy way of assessing an unknown wine, the marketeers realised that if you put a mediocre wine in a heavy bottle, it would sell. Sadly, this simple way of test- ing an unknown wine no longer works as well as it did.
Best of Bordeaux So what can you learn froma label?Well, if it’s a French label, the rule to bear in mind is that the more specific the information as to where the wine came from, the better the wine. So if you want to know the hierarchy in, say, Bordeaux, it goes like this. A bottle marked ‘Bordeaux’ red or white is about as generic as you can get. It could come from anywhere in the entire region of Bordeaux, and could be a blend of wines from several parts of the region. The next step up is when the label says ‘Medoc’.Now you know that the wine is froma spe- cific part of Bordeaux, specifically the Medoc. Up a step and you find ‘Haut Medoc’, which tells you
the wine is from the upper Medoc. Then you get a parish name, like St Estephe, St Laurent, Pauillac, Margaux and so on. Now it’s becoming more specific and the quality of wine is rising. After the parish comes the vineyard, and that’s the most specific level in French labelling. The wine will have Château Latour, or Château Lafite on the label, plus, of course, the year of the vintage.
WHAT’S IN A 66 Irish Director Summer 2011
LABEL
?
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72