Breaking Down a Wine Label

The Case of the Missing Grape Variety

By Tim Powers

Without a doubt one of the most intimidating feelings can be walking into a wine shop and seeing a wall of bottles towering around you. Although attendants at these stores are often helpful, one would often like to be able to sort through this intimidating glass behemoth and separate the wheat from the chaff oneself (or grapes from the MOG in this instance). Thankfully, there are many clues a wine label can provide when you’re trying to decipher the qualities of the mysterious liquid inside each bottle.

As you attempt to parse the language, ABV, tasting notes, and fun label decorations, it seems as if each bottle is designed to appear as enticing, distinctive, and delicious as possible, and in fact, they are! Throughout this series, we will explore the many facets of a wine label, from grape variety, to country and region of origen, and even legally binding and unregulated labeling terms, in order to empower industry professionals, enthusiasts, and novices alike to feel comfortable and confident in discerning every iota of information one can from a wine label.

We start this series off with one of the most important labeling items: the grape variety. Since wine is a beverage made by fermented grape juice it goes without saying that the number one ingredient in wine is grapes. Since this is most often the only ingredient (barring pitched yeast, see our earlier post), it would seem obvious that winemakers would want to clearly state exactly what, or which, varieties of grapes were used. Furthermore, grape variety is one of the more common factors consumers use to select a bottle of wine. So why do some bottles not list it?

Although most wines made and bottled in the United States will proudly list their grape variety front and center on the label, some wines, especially those made in European countries, will list the region where the wine was produced instead. Although it may seem a rather Euro-centric choice for the producer to assume that wine buyers the world over will know which grapes are used in which regional wine, the history actually goes much deeper.

Many of these ‘Old World’ European vineyards have roots stretching back hundreds, if not thousands of years. We believe that winemaking using vitis vinifera grapes (the species still used today) began about 8,000 years ago, in the area of the world that now contains the modern-day nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, northern Iran, and eastern Turkey (thanks to Wine Folly for that tidbit). There is evidence of indigenous populations across Italy cultivating vineyards back to 1,000 BCE. These practices were then refined by the Etruscans in the 8th to 6th century BCE, and spread throughout the Greek Empire from there. As the Romans stepped into power, they continued to refine their vineyards and winemaking techniques, borrowing from the techniques of both the Etruscans and the Greeks

There are many archaeological examples across France and Germany dating back to ~200 BCE, as the native Gauls traded with their southern neighbors in Italy, and received clay amphora of wine and grape vines. Vineyards spread further across Europe as the Roman Empire began to expand north, conquering their former Gallic neighbors, and planting grapes across the western and central European countryside. In fact, there are records of Burgundian vineyards being praised for their excellence as far back as 312 CE.

Although the above is an extremely brief overview of the development of viticultural and oenological knowledge, it’s important to note that, despite these advancements, the people were often unaware of the exact variety or species of grape they were planting. Furthermore, after the fall of the Roman Empire, much of this knowledge was lost, with the responsibility of managing these vineyards falling to religious institutions, namely abbeys and monasteries.

This meant that wine enthusiasts in that day and age had to resort to referring to wine by its region, not the grape name. If you were trying to buy a wine in 1400 CE, you wouldn’t think to ask for a Sauvignon Blanc from the central region of the Loire Valley, you would ask for a Sancerre. Though our ancestral wine enthusiasts were passionate and knowledgeable about wine in their own right, they simply did not have the information to know that the white grape grown in Sancerre and Bordeaux was the same Sauvignon Blanc.

Since these wine regions have been growing the same grape varieties and producing the same (or similar) style of wine for so long, they have chosen to identify their wine by region, rather than by variety, encompassing the millennia of history, tradition, and culture that each bottle encapsulates.

As grape vines were brought over to the ‘New World’ through European colonization, these grape varieties had been more thoroughly analyzed and cataloged, starting with Carl Linneus in 1753. Since we now knew the grapes by their species, it made more sense to identify them, and their resulting wines, by their scientific names. This process especially proved useful as, post-phylloxera and prohibition in the United States, many regions were planted with a wide number of grape varieties, meaning that labeling by region alone would prove quite confusing. This practice carried on to the other New World wine regions, and the practice of labeling wines with their grape variety(ies) has become a common practice outside of Europe around the world.

Unfortunately, just because a label states a single grape variety does not mean that said grape is the only one used in a bottle. Each country’s laws differ, but in the United States a wine need only contain 75% particular grape for that to be the only one listed on the label. Although that may seem deceitful, in practice, this gives winemakers the ability to round out the wine, ensuring that it maintains varietal typicity, while accounting for vintage variations that could otherwise prove difficult to overcome.

Despite the history of Old World wine producers labeling their bottles by region, most now choose to include the grape variety as well in order to help inform the buyer and to make their wine more marketable. But never be afraid to ask, or pull out a wine map, if you want to sample a wine that doesn’t state the grape.