Wine Label Week wrap-up, plus a 1945 Korbel and a 2003-2005 Brandolini

No WLW is complete without a wrap-up, so this post includes a summary of the proceedings of the last week of September, the very first Wine Label Week aka WBW 1.

See bulleted items below for how wine labels are implemented (correctly, and unfortunately, incorrectly). But rather than ending WLW on a cynical note, I'd like to emphasize the comments and emails I received. Many visitors left insightful comments, which is great -- I appreciate them and give thanks for them. One visitor even sent me a photo of his most prized label from 1945, which is cool because I was waiting for a reason to run my favourite label. (Thanks Joe!)

NEW SAQ ENABLES THE LABELS

People are interested in wine labels. I think there's a new trend toward valuing data like what is presented on the wine label. In fact, the SAQ -- the state-run wine distributor in Quebec -- has just redesigned its website to allow for a greater focus on wine labeling information. This means expanded information on current vintages of the bottles detailed on saq.com profile pages. And they increasingly include images of bottles and their labels.

I applaud this -- though the SAQ redesign means the hyperlinks on my site which used to navigate to inidividual wine profiles at saq.com no longer work. I will have re-code them one by one. Please bear with me as I redirect links to the spiffy new SAQ listings. At the very least, this tedious process will allow me to start pointing to the English pages at saq.com, something I was unable to do before, but as demonstrated below, can now do!

Here are a couple of favourite wine labels from WLW 1 -- a personal fave of mine and Joe's favourite label, which attaches to the oldest bottle he owns, a 1945 Korbel Brut! Click on each label image to be linked into the brand new SAQ profile pages for even more labeling information for these wines.




Whoops, actually the SAQ carries neither of these wines. Too bad.

A SUMMARY OF WINE LABEL WEEK

Wine labels exist to convey important information about bottle contents, not the least of which is a wine's designation, critically acting as a kind of quality assurance system

• A breakdown and analysis of label information was introduced on Monday

Labels, which allow a winemakers to market their wares better than almost anything else, can actually be an expensive undertaking and considering their cost, they are surprisingly not always perfect

• In investigating labels on Tuesday and Wednesday, we saw mistakes or incorrect information, namely alcohol by volume (abv) discrepencies on the label that indicated levels beyond tolerance:

In terms of discrepancies between the actual abv of the liquid and that stated on the label, in Europe the abv on the label must rounded up or down to a whole or half percent. So if the wine is 13.1%, the producer can choose to label it as 13% or 13.5%. In the EU, a label that states the more exact 13.1% would be illegal, presumably for some bizarre bureaucratic reason. The tolerance for sparkling wine is 0.8% in the EU. NB these tolerances are lower than in many other countries, including South Africa, Australia and the US (for wines produced and sold in those countries).

- Julia Harding, from the forum at JancisRobinson.com, where participants noted that the label expense often encourage winemakers to use labels from previous vintages with crucial updates made to the information that deviates from year to year, but these changes are corrected on the label with varying degrees of success.

The promotional elements of a label may be nice to look at or read, and they can affect your perception of a wine but ultimately judging a wine by its label can be a very difficult task

• On Thursday, label details and especially prettied-up labels were acknowledged to influence shoppers and even evaluators, which is one reason blind tastings exist.

You can glean other things from the tradition and customs involved in labeling

• The absence of a vintage label on Friday led to interesting assumptions about a wine's origin.

All in all, wine label information is serious business. Virtually all New World wines are labeled by grape variety but it's illegal to label a wine with a certain variety when it is actually another. Equally Old World wines can be fraudulent for falsely appropriating a wine designation and this has been in the news recently for misrepresentation.

And if you're wondering why my favourite wine label -- it's the one with the heart -- seems to be misrepresenting by neither specifying a wine designation, a grape variety or a vintage year, it's because the wine has none of those things: A blend of three grapes harvested over three years (hence the name "Treanni") by a winemaker that needs no designation. Friuli's Conte Brandolini d'Adda is the future of wine labeling because its singular and artful approach is all you need to know to buy its wines. Now if only I could find myself a bottle with this label. Here's a lead.

Moving beyond the label: Domaine Renucci Calvi 2005

And what it means to buy the wine enthusiast a good wine gift


When this site's Wine Label Week 1 ended last week, I had to go into overdrive at work. I neglected to post anything, but of course that would change when today my boss gifted me a bottle of wine -- Greek and white and made of grapes that I had never tried or even heard of before.

It's not obvious that a wineblogger would find it nice to be gifted wine at work.

Work is not a place I associate with wine or with winos. In my current office the closest I came to having a real wine conversion was several weeks ago with my boss who, reading about my interest in wine on the pages the Montreal Gazette, said: "I just like the wines that have those pretty crests embossed into the glass."

Luckily, my wine gift was not one with an insignia melded into the glass between the shoulders and the neck of the bottle.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. I do like plenty of those Loire and Rhône examples that my boss was referring to, but for different reasons. Regardless, it's very clear that the association between wine and its worthiness in your mind might not extend to the person you're buying for. This becomes the crucial idea in any exemplary act of gift-giving. You buy for the recipient, not for yourself. So, strange as it seems, wine has actually become the hardest of gifts for me to give.

Today's gift had none of that wine-bestowing awkwardness. And that's because I suspect my boss turned to one wino for advice on what to give to another. That's smart. I don't think any wine enthusiast wouldn't be thrilled to receive an inexpensive "discovery" bottle that's hard-to-find, unique, and from a new region and producer, which describes the Greek wine I received.

Since I haven't yet had the chance to look into my Greek bottle, I'm presenting to you here an equally unique wine that's from Corsica, which is a burgeoning wine region -- but still hard-to-find in your wine shop -- and an inexpensive way to discover new grapes (Sciaccarello!) and new producers. This is the Domaine Renucci Corse Calvi 2005 (click on the bottle shown at top for product details).

Oh, and just check out how that glass bottle upstages the wine label...


Indeed! In honour of today's gift-giver, this Domaine Renucci red wine comes with some nifty relief: an embossed band encircling the bottle and featuring the emblem of Corsica (the profile of a Moor's head, pictured above). And, what's more, turn around the bottle to find a rendering of the island of Corsica, which is just off the south of France in the Mediterranean Sea (look for the outlined island at the centre of the below photograph, which, since the wine was so inviting, I was able to shoot from the front of the emptying bottle... Dear Corsicans: sorry my reproduction ends up inverting the image of your homeland).

Eyes: A nice bright red colour with fuschia hues.

NB: This unfiltered wine is pas collé ou filtré but you notice that more in the mouth than to the eye. Mine didn't throw a lot of sediment.

Nose: Aroma is promising, not quite feisty but suggesting both fruit and mineral, spices and leather. A bit like an effervescent cream soda.

Mouth: Tantalizes the palate with freshness and some very nice tannins in a medium-bodied wine with a strong finish. This is by all means a lively wine, brambly and fun with a lot of mouthfeel. The flavour profile at first seems quite deep -- earthy tones coalescing into a root beer notes, black cherry with cream, hitting some fleeting high notes of caramelization, then it goes typical of the regional grape varieties of Corsica and delivers grenadine. Actually with the Renucci it's practically grenadine syrup. It's extracted, but expressive and still young. It may lack in acidity, and its candy flavours, though surely developing, are not too complex at this stage, and could become cloying as a result... I can't wait to try this wine when I reopen the leftovers.

Stomach: Since it's a 2005 wine and I guess that the caramel notes that are hinted at could blossom with time, you might want to eventually serve this with something exotic like a Cornish hen with a flavourful herb stuffing that highlights cumin or other earthy spices. It is current state, I'd play it lighter: have it with roast chicken in a mild peppercorn sauce, couscous and some root vegetables.

Berard Renucci, Feliceto, Corse, France. 13.5%.

Next post: A proper wrap-up of WLW 1