Hello ~ I have come to interpret the label of a bottle of wine again!
Today, this wine is still coming from someone else's table, and it is still on a picture with a "claw".
Just such a cursory look, the faint outline of the castle, should be able to think that this is probably a French red wine.
Let's zoom in to verify it!
That's right, zoom in and we're sure it's a French wine!
（1）
If you ask me where I saw it, let's not say that there are a lot of letters on it that I can't understand, we can see the familiar English - FRANCE from the first line of the wine label
Didn't you immediately think it was too simple! It's France!!
Inside, I'm not taking English class, although it looks a bit like it, but let's keep watching it
（2）
See "Château"? This is the meaning of "castle", and the English Nadal-Hainaul below is actually the name of this castle.
We see the golden logo further down, which is obviously designed by two capital letters NH, which is the logo of the winery
Speaking of castles, we can talk a little more. Why at first I said that I vaguely saw the outline of the castle and thought it should be French wine.
In fact, Château is the most popular way of naming wineries in Bordeaux, France, and many French appellations. Because if a winery uses the word Château on its label, it literally means that their winery has a magnificent and proud castle building.
Of course, not all such named wineries must have a castle.
Otherwise, 90% of bordeaux's nearly 10,000 wineries are named "Château XX"! How many castles do you have to have?
Babies can't imagine what a Bordeaux would look like if there were nearly ten thousand castles!!
In order not to let everyone use this beautiful word,
Let's see what specific legal requirements the French authorities have for the use of the "Château".
1. The wine must be produced in any French Appellation (AOP)
2. The grapes used for winemaking must come from the estate (i.e., only grapes grown on your own estate)
3. The wine must be brewed and bottled in the original winery
As long as the above conditions are met, the winery can use the "Château" to name the wine.
So that's when we see the word Château, we can understand that the wine meets these conditions, and think about it means that we can trace back to the wine from viticulture to winery. This quality must have a certain guarantee and is not easy to step on.
（3）
Looking down, LE +...
Generally at the very bottom of the label, it can be the name of the winery. It can also be the name of the company to which the winery belongs.
So you don't have to care too much, we won't read it anyway.
（4）
The following content involves the production area again, which is more critical
ROUSSILLON COASTS
Look at the long word in the back - ROUSSILLON RusiRong
Let's also take a look at this southern French appellation.
This appellation is close to the Spanish border, the terrain is high and rugged, in addition to the dry red wines we see, this appellation is also the most important natural sweet wine (VDN) appellation in France, which can be said in detail later, we probably know it now.
To say what the quality of the wine here is, let's first say what are the characteristics of this place?
To put it bluntly, grapes are also a kind of crop, watching the sky to eat is part of it, and looking at the soil is also very important.
This place is the hottest and driest wine region in all of France.
Mediterranean climate with strong sunshine, mild winters and hot summers.
Moreover, the soil characteristics are very diverse, including pebbles, sandstone, marl, limestone, schist, clay, fine sandy soil and so on.
As a result, red wines in this place are usually dark, full-bodied and fruity.
As for the grape varieties, I sneaked a look at the foreign labels, this red wine is made from a mixture of Syrah and Grenache grapes.
(Do I have to expand?) Characteristics of the Syrah and Grenache grape varieties? Forget it, don't say it, it's endless. ）
But you can remember that French red wines are basically blended, rarely single varieties!
This is because in addition to relying on the sky to eat, French wines will also improve themselves, through blending can solve some of the adjustment of winemaking when the harvest is not good.
French wineries just like "blend", a word I just learned, just enough to use, mixed meaning.
(Exposed my little moves that I've been learning English lately as well!) If you want to find a school companion, you can also find me HOHOHO~)
（5）
We talked a lot about the appellation, and then we looked at the following line of small print:
Protected Designation of Origin
This abbreviation is AOC – Appellation of Origin Protection
This sentence means that the French National Agency for The Nomenclature of Origin has reviewed the grape variety, ripeness, etc. of the wine, and ensured that the local origin represents the quality of the wine to some extent. The better the quality wine, the smaller the sub-appellation name.
The reason is similar to "Chinese snail powder" PK "China Guangxi snail powder"
Do you think Guangxi is more authentic and tastier?
（6）
Finally almost finished reading, I feel tired of knocking ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The word at the bottom is even smaller: Mis en bouteille au château
This line marks that the grapes that make the wine are grown, fermented and bottled in the winery, which is a guarantee of the very reliable quality of the wine.
That's the guarantee of bottling at the winery!!!
You don't have to worry about the wine being bottled somewhere else.
Then you may also ask, if the wine merchant is not in the winery to fill can not use this sentence, of course not!
但会写上:Bottling at the property
This is what it means for a wine merchant to bottle and a production company to bottle.
This is because there are some vineyard winegrowers who are not so strong, do not have professional winemaking equipment, they sell grapes to vintners, vintners to brew or bottle, this time the bottling action is also done by vintners.
Generally speaking, this quality is lower than that of "Château", but the quality is still reliable and guaranteed.
Just lay down, and remembered that this bottle of wine did not actually have the year and alcohol content written on the positive label, I can tell you that from the back label I saw that the alcohol content is 14% vol. It has just been mentioned that Roussillon is the hottest region in France, so the wine is fuller and the alcohol content is naturally not low.
The year is 2014...
——————————————————————————
This is the information obtained from this French label.
Did you follow along with it?
The next time you see the wine in france's Roussillon appellation, you may know more than a shopping guide!
But isn't there still a lot of content to interpret?
Therefore, to be able to fully understand the wine label, it also requires a lot of knowledge accumulation.
But through the interpretation of bottles of wine, we can gradually accumulate this knowledge.
Learning about wine from looking at wine labels, I feel that it is still a practical way.
Welcome to the small friends who like wine to continue to pay attention!
Also give me some advice or corrections to help me progress, thank you!
Of course, you are also welcome to ask me questions, I will try very hard to answer your ha ~ ~ ~ ~