Wine is wine, but watch what you call Burgundy

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Only sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France can be called champagne. (AP)

Updated: September 7, 2011 12:17AM

There are places and there are grapes, and those are the two ways wines are identified. It can make things confusing, but wine is wine no matter where it's from or how it's named.

In the simplest breakdown, European countries name wines for the place they come from. The rest of the wine-producing world - the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and South Africa - mostly name wines for the grapes that go into them.

Bordeaux, in the southwest of France, is one of the world's most famous and important wine regions, home to storied winemakers such as Chateau Margaux and Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. With a few exceptions, wines that are made in that region, from grapes grown in that region, are known simply as "Bordeaux." It does not matter if they are red or white.

Red wines from Bordeaux contain some combination of the following grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot. A white Bordeaux is made from Sauvignon Blanc.

The same goes for France's other most famous wine regions, Burgundy and Champagne. Only wines from those places can be called by those names. Thus, we have champagne from Champagne and sparkling wine from California. Even sparkling wine outside of Champagne but still in France cannot use the name "champagne." That wine is known as Cremant.

The French red wine known as "Burgundy" would be called simply "Pinot Noir" in Oregon. Likewise, the French white wine known as "Burgundy" would be called "Chardonnay" here.

It's easier already, is it not?

In the United States, we have wine regions, such as Napa Valley, that are divided into smaller divisions called "American Viticultural Areas" or more generically, "appellations."

These AVAs are the geographic equivalent of AOCs (Appellation d'Origine Controlee) in France, but the equivalency ends with geography. In France, strict laws determine which kinds of grapes can be grown in certain areas, while in the United States any grapes can be grown anywhere.

For an American wine to be identified as a specific grape, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, it must contain at least 75 percent of that grape's juice. If it hits that mark, it can contain 25 percent of any other grape imaginable. So the Cabernet Sauvignon that you buy might not contain 100 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Bordeaux produces some of the best wines in the world, and winemakers there all blend to their advantage.

Burgundies, however, are either 100 percent Pinot Noir or 100 percent Chardonnay.

The king of Italian wines, the fabled Barolo, is named for the tiny town in Piedmont where winemakers produce it using Nebbiolo grapes. A wine made from Nebbiolo outside of Barolo cannot be called Barolo, plain and simple.

In Spain, the red variety of Rioja wine is made from Tempranillo grapes that can be blended with Garnacha (called Grenache in France and the United States) and two other red grapes. But the wine's got to be from Rioja.

If California adopted these Old World traditions and laws, we would have not only restrictions on which grapes could be grown where - and how very un-American that would be - but also wines known as "Napa Valley" or "Sonoma County," among others. As it stands, the names of American wine regions appear on labels, along with the wine's more specific AVA, such as "Rutherford" in the Napa or "Chalk Hill" in Sonoma. But those labels also usually announce the kinds of grapes used in the winemaking.

So, no, Virginia, those jugs of "Hearty Burgundy" that Ernest & Julio Gallo began bottling in the 1970s were not really Burgundy. And sometimes Paris is just a hotel in Las Vegas or a city in Illinois and not the capital of France.

There's one more factor in this complicated equation, and this time it's not a place or a grape. It's a made-up word. The word is Meritage, and it rhymes with heritage.

California wines carrying a Meritage designation on their label have been made using the grapes and blending traditions of Bordeaux. But they can't call themselves "Bordeaux," see, because they're not from Bordeaux.

Try a Robert Mondavi Private Selection Meritage from California next to a Chateau de Lisennes Bordeaux from France (each $12), and see if you can distinguish how they are similar, and how they are worlds apart.

To make your tasting more interesting, invite friends over and serve them the two wines side-by-side without telling them which is which. Ask them to identify the one from France and the one from California. See if they know the "John" from the "Jean."

Michael Austin is a Chicago free-lance writer. E-mail thepourman@suntimes.com.