California wine and Italian wine are simple you have Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc for both. Pino Grigio, only comes from Italy. Why do the french categorize their wines different from the rest? And can someone give the run down of what the French wine types taste like?
French wines are classified by the region, while most other places classify by the grape. This is a pretty rough map of the regions in France. Notice Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and so on.
Why didn’t other areas name their wines after the region? I’m not sure, but I’ll make a WAG: Marketing wine outside your local area has been relatively recent for most places but France. Now, obviously a grower in California couldn’t go saying he was making Chablis (which properly comes from a region in Burgundy), but he could say that he was producing wine from chardonnay grapes, which is pretty much all that goes into Chablis in the first place. The problem is that this obviously doesn’t stop producers of sparkling wines from lying through their teeth and calling it Champagne, but I’m going to bet that’s a more recent event.
Oh, and pinot grigio is not only in Italy. It originated in Burgundy, where it was called “pinot gris”. In fact, though it’s not horribly popular, you can find quite a few other vintners putting out pinot gris if you look a bit.
As for what they taste like: that’s (a) very subjective, and (b) far too complicated. Go buy some and do some of your own research until you’re blotto!
As I understand it - and that’s only a bit - French wine classification centres around the concept of terroir. That is, as well as what sort of grape is used, the regional characteristics of wine are important. This includes climate and soil, but also the local winemaking ethos.
To use an Australian example, shiraz from the Barossa in South Australia is quite different from Victorian or Tasmanian shiraz. Part of this is climate - the Sth Australian climate is hotter and yields ripe, jammy fruit; cooler climates make for spicy or chocolatey fruit - and part of it is that Barossa winemakers have traditionally made big, acid, high alcohol wines whereas winemakers from the Grampians region in Victoria have made more reserved shiraz.*
It’s a similar story with other grape varieties like Riesling - some are sweet, some are dry, some are minerally. Part of this is due to geographic characteristics, and part is local winemaking tradition. If you walk into a shop to look for Riesling it can be hard to tell what you’re going to get. On the other hand if you look for an Alsace white you might have a better idea.
In addition to this the French have a quality classification system. I think this is mainly done on a historical basis and that it can be a little misleading.
- [sub]Such as the 2001 Seppelt Chalambar Shiraz I’m drinking now - a rich but subtle drop quite unlike the ball-tearing shiraz that most people think of when they think of OZ plonk.[/sub]
Garrison Keillor spoke of a Pinot Moor wine especially formulated for older men who hate getting up in the middle of the night. I feel sure he was joking. 
It’s not true that countries besides France do not have regional appelations. Chianti, for example, is limited to certain regions in Tuscany.
One big difference between american wines and european wines is that american wineries tend to use a single variety of grape in a wine while blends of grapes are much more common in Europe. I think Cabernet Sauvingon is just too much by itself. Red Bordeaux wines are a mixture of Cabernet Sauvingon, Carbernet Franc, and/or Merlot.
Then what are Medoc, Saint-Emilion or Margux (I might of misspelled a few of these words.) I would describe merlot as medium dry and a medium thick body. Cabe/Sauv would be full body dry wine. How would you describe the wines I mentioned above?
If Burgundy is a region in France, then is California burgundy supposed to be?
Burgundy (Bourgogne in French) is a region of France that makes red wines that are primarily pinot noir. A California “Burgundy” would also contain pinot noir.
Medoc and Saint-Emilion are place names in Bordeaux; i.e., they are more specific. Margaux is a Chateau; i.e., a specific farm in Bordeaux. Bordeaux’s are tricky, they can vary depending on where they are made. I like the ones that have more merlot in them.
As a rough approximation: Burgundy = Pinot Noir, Bordeaux = Cabernet, and Chablis = Chardonay. Of course they make white wines in Bordeaux and Burgundy as well, and as I mentioned earlier, they blend grapes in France.
American wines are also acquiring more of a local designation, in addition to the grape varietal - For example, I haven’t seen something say merely “California” in a long time, and even “Napa” is often more closely defined - e.g. “Yountville.”
It turns out that there are, in fact, about 170 American Viticultural Areas designated by federal regulation. Napa and Sonoma Counties alone have 26.
I’m not really aknowledgeable about wines, but generally speaking, french wines aren’t classified according to the kind of grapes used, but according to the region where they’re produced.
First, in France there are several categories of wines, each one being more restrictive than the preceding :
-First the basic, cheap “vins de table” (table wines) which aren’t really regulated. They can be a a mix of various wines produced from different grapes in different regions or even countries.
-Then, the “vins de pays” (regional wines). They must be produced in a defined area (for instance a “vin de la haute vallee de l’Aude” must be produced in said valley), and there are some regulations applying on production, such as the number of plants allowed by acre, the minimal % of alcohol, the grape used, etc…, so that there would be some consistency between the various wines using the same name. If you produce wine in “the haute vallee de l’Aude” but if you don’t use the same grapes, it has a significantly different alcoholic content, etc…you couldn’t use this name because your wine would be significantly different from what is expected by the consummer.
-Then the “vins delimites de qualite superieures (VDQS)” , where the area of production is more strictly defined, the norms of production and the technics used in growing them is regulated, they’re tested, etc…
-Finally, the “vins d’appellation d’origine controllée (AOC)”. Here you come to the most prestigious ones. The exact pieces of land where they can be produced in a given area is precisely delimited, depending on the soil, on the climate, sun exposition, etc…(that would be the notion of “terroir”), the technics used in growing the grapes and producing the wines are precisely regulated and must conform to the traditionnal local procedures, etc… That would be the most well-known french wines.
The general idea is that the kind of grape used isn’t enough to define a wine. The kind of soil where it grows, the climate, the methods used to produce it, etc…all have a significant influence on the final product, its taste, its quality… So, a wine can’t be called " bordeaux superieur" just because it more or less taste like a generic wine produced in this area or because you’re using a specific grape to produce it. It’s not even enough to produce it in the Bordeaux area. It’s geographicaly much more restrictive than that, and you must conform to strictly defined methods of production, and even demonstrate that the organoleptics and chemical characteristics of your wine are on par with other such wines. Your sparkling wine isn’t a “Champagne” either, even if produced in Champagne, if you grow the grapes on the other side of the hill, or make your wine not using the customary methods.
Yep, same for the Douro Valley Demarcated Region that produces Port. Now, these regional names are enforced by the EU, correct? Which is why Italians and Germans won’t claim to produce Champagne, while California does. Is my understanding correct?
That is correct. Even other regions of France cannot call their product " Champagne ". Also , as well Port being restricted to that region in Portugal ,the same goes for Sherry. At one time you could get South African and Cyprus " sherry " ,but not any more. They have to call their products by different names
What clairobscure said is true, but maybe a bit misleading. In fact most of the wine you will ever see (even in a French supermarket) is AOC. (They have a green label over the cork.) Vin du pays and vin du table are almost exclusively used for cooking.
(I couldn’t find any breakdown with production in the different categories, but this PDF shows that almost 50 times as much area is dedicated for AOC wine production, as opposed to VDQS.)
German wine classification is also accroding to the growing region and not the type of grape. The type of grape is however mentioned on the label. That’s why you can get a Riesling from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region and one from the Rheinhessen region, and they will taste completely different. The “pinot grigio” grape mentioned further up in this thread is also grown in Germany, where it is called “Grauburgunder”, as opposed to “Burgunder”, which is “pinot noir”. Germany is mostly known for it’s white wines (predominantly Rieslings), but it also produces some surprisingly good red wines. Just make sure not to buy any “Liebfrauenmilch” or “Zeller Schwarze Katz”, which are just mixes of different types of white grapes. If the type of grape is not clearly listed on the label, stay away.
Absolutely not. “vin de pays” are commonly served with ordinary meals, or in cafes, restaurants, etc… The wide majority of these bottles are drunk, not used for cooking. And though “vins de table” are at the low end of the scale, they’re sold in large quantity. It probably highly depends on the socio-economical category you belong to or hang out with.
Go to stores basing their marketing on low prices, land look at what people are mostly buying. It’s certainly not AOC wines. There’s a much larger number of diffferent VDQS or AOC, so they take more room in more regular supermarkets, but it doesn’t mean that more bottles are sold. A lot of people drink wine on a regular basis, and not everybody is willing or able to spend a lot of money buying higher quality wine. If you’re a guest, what you’ll be served will most probably not be representative of what people are drinking during regular meals.
OK, I might have exaggerated a bit. Looking a bit more carefully at the PDF I linked to above, it’s clear that ‘autres vins’ account for 37% of the areal dedicated for wine production. Even assuming that these ‘vin du table’ etc are more productive, it’s pretty clear that AOC forms the majority, but not by as much as I thought.
(I must admitt that I’m a bit shocked at the high numbers for ‘vin du table/pays’. I’ve only ever bought it for cooking. After all, you can get cheap AOC wine for as low as EUR2/bottle.)
A significant part of the wine used for “vin de table” isn’t produced in France, but imported. I would also note that the productivity/ hectare for AOC wines is significantly lower than for more ordinary wines. So the number of hectares cultivated doesn’t allow to compare the volume of wine produced.
After checking other pages of your link, it apears that on average between 1998 and 2002, 25, 8 millions of hectoliters of VDQS or AOC wine were produced each year, as compared with 22,2 millions hectoliters of “vins de pays” and “vins de table”. So there’s only a bit more VDQS/AOC wines produced, despite them being cultivated on a significantly larger area.
I also found out (still on your site) the average purchases of a french household :
24,1 liters of AOC or VDQS wine (80,1% of the households buy them)
20,3 liters of “vins de pays” (44,8% buy them)
20,3 liters of “vins de table” (yes, the same figure) (43,6% buy them)
4,4 liters of Champagne (28,8% buy them)
6,9 liters of other sparkling wines (28,5% buy them)
So, it seems that french people consumption is very roughly 1/3 VDQS or AOC, 1/3 “vins de pays” and 1/3 “vins de table”. Which would contradict your statement that people don’t buy/drink the two latter. I somehow doubt french people drink only 24 l of wine a year while using 40 l/year essentially for cooking.
At first I thought that a lot of people didn’t buy "vins de pays or “vins de table”, but actually, we can’t tell it, since for instance people buying “vins de table” could not buy “vins de table” (actually, it’s quite likely, since both wines serves the same purpose : being an ordinary days beverage, so I would suspect numerous people stick to one or the other).
Also, since the figures for production and for comsomption don’t correlate, it seems that a significant part of the AOC/VDQS produced are actually exported.
Out of curiosity, I checked what kind of wine I had myself (I sometimes buys a bottle for potential guests, but since I rarely drink wine myself, they stay unopened there, and I had no clue what I could have). I happen to have one bottle of VDQS (“gros plan du pays nantais”) and three bottles of AOC (Gewurtzstraminer, Bergerac and Cotes du Rhone)
As result of this thread, I’m going to have a glass of wine… 
OK, I admit to being misstaken. I simply extrapolated from what I’ve seen/done, which is always a dangerous habit.
If I did that, you’d find about 60 bottles of AOC, 20 bottles of foreign wine and three bottles vin de table, leftover from last time I made vin-chaude.
There’s a nice graphic here, showing that 35% of wine is AOC. (I’m not sure if that’s a percentage of production or consumption, though.)
Can we at least agree that almost all the wine that’s exported is AOC? (After all, I believe that that’s what the OP is interrested in.)
I’m not surprised. I mentionned since the beginning that I wasn’t a reference as far as wine was concerned. I only answered because I assumed there wouldn’t be many people on this board familiar with french wines denominations. I was obviously wrong.
We can’t agree on this, because I wouldn’t know if it’s true. Hmmm…sorry…thinking twice, I’ve seen french “vin de table” proeminently displayed in a shop in London (which made me smile, given the quality of said wine). So at least some of it is exported to some countries. So, it’s perhaps not totally pointless to mention them, in case someone would be made to believe that this kind of wine is of some particular value just because it’s imported (which seemed to be the intent of the shopkeeper in London).
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I had a jones for a wine discussion today.
I’ll caveat my response, but from my (American) perspective this is true. Almost all of the French wine I see in my liquor store is AOC. I see the occational vin de pays, and never in my life have I seen a vin de table.
My caveats…
- I pretty much stick to Bordeaux and Rhone wines.
- This is strictly anectodal
- I’m American
To add another twist to the naming convetions: You do occasionally see a French wine with the name of a grape on the label. It is my understanding that this is allowed, but by doing so the producer loses his right to put a specific appellation on the label. For example if the fine folks at Chateau Latour lost their minds and wanted to put “Cabernet Sauvignon” on their label, they could do so, but then would not be able to say that it was a Paulliac wine.