Mike Supple from SuppleWine.com goes through easy steps so you can read and recognize key information on a wine label for a Californian wine.
Transcript
Matt: Hi. I’m with Mike Supple of SuppleWine.com, and we’re here to talk about how to read labels. We’re starting with California.
Mike: Alright. So reading a label is something that’s fairly easy if you know what you’re doing. It’s also fairly important if you don’t know what you’re doing, so if your friend invites you over for dinner and says, ‘Hey, come over to my house; bring a bottle of Cabernet,’ you don’t just sort of sit on the other end of the phone going ‘duh…’. You want to be able to go into the store and kind of know what you’re doing. Maybe ask a few questions, but get yourself there.
Mike: So here’s a California wine label. Start out with an easy piece of information: they always have the name of the producer. This one here is Canyon Road. Second thing: the most popular style of wines in California are the varietal based wines, and that means what they say on the label is the main grape in there. This one right here: Cabernet Sauvignon. That means it’s at least 75% Cabernet Sauvignon. That’s a law in the United States; it’s got to be at least 75% to have that name on the front.
Matt: 0% beer though.
Mike: Yeah…at least in the US!
Mike: The important thing: they can put 25% of whatever else they want in there. It does have to be made from grapes, it has to be wine, but it can be anything else they want. It can be white grapes, it can be red grapes. Basically, the better producers are going to put in whatever they think makes it taste better. Some producers are going to use 100% Cabernet Sauvignon; some might think it tastes better with 10% Merlot - it might make it a little softer. But basically that’s what you’re looking for: the varietal name.
Mike: They’re also going to have a region on each label. This one just says California. That just means that the grapes came from anywhere in California. They didn’t go with a specific region that tastes like certain things. They can blend some grapes from Napa, from Sonoma, from the Central Coast.
Matt: Oakland?
Mike: They could blend some grapes from Oakland, San Francisco Bay. You never really know what’s going on in those ones.
Mike: What other pieces of info? They always tell you the alcohol by volume. That’s important because it’s really a tax thing. Certain levels of alcohol get different tax rates. So if it’s below 14% they call it “table wine” and it’s a lower tax bracket. Above that they call it “dessert wine” and it’s more expensive for tax purposes - not for you, but for the winery.
Matt: Alright, so that was California. Now we’re going to get a little more specific and go with something you know. We’re talking about Napa.
Mike: This is still a wine from California, but the information on the label is a little bit different. Again, you’re going to have the producer. The name of this producer is Trefethen, which happens to be one of my favorite Napa based wines, but that’s not important right now.
Mike: A few other things you might see on here: at the top, Estate Grown. That means that they actually own the vineyards and they grow the grapes that they use to make this wine. That other one we were looking at doesn’t say that, which means they could have bought the grapes from anybody. A lot of people do this. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad if they buy the grapes. Some people have long-term contracts so they buy the same grapes from the same guy in the same place for 20, 30, 40 years, but when it’s estate grown it generally means since they own the vineyards they have a little more control over the entire process. It’s usually going to mean that it’s a little higher quality.
Matt: And probably more expensive as well.
Mike: Well, right. Every time they spend more money and there’s more quality, they bump the price up. Whether it’s better or not, the price goes up.
Mike: Again, you’re going to see the year the wine was made. This was made in 2004. This is also a Cabernet Sauvignon, which means it’s got to be at least 75% Cabernet. This particular wine blends, I believe, Merlot, a little Petite Verdot, maybe a little bit of Cabernet Franc in there. It says Estate Grown, which means they own the vineyards these other grapes are from, but it’s not necessarily all Cabernet Sauvignon. And they do this because they feel adding those grapes just gives it a little more complexity, a little more nuance, etc.
Mike: The other major difference here is that this says ‘Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley’. It doesn’t say California. That’s called an American Viticultural Area, or an AVA. These are designated regions in the United States where the government and the growers have decided that certain wines from these vineyards always have specific characteristics. And so they put that on [the label] - Oak Knoll District is an AVA within the Napa Valley. It’s something a little extra, a little more designated, so it generally means the quality is going to be a little bit higher than something that just says California, and it also means it’s going to be a little more expensive.
Matt: So basically what you’re telling us is that you start out with the state, then the larger region and then the AVA. The smaller it gets, the farther you go down the line, the more likely you are to have something very distinct. Also, as Mike told you, they can name the varietal on the label if there is 75% or more of the grape, but sometimes there’s nothing on that label at all.
Mike: That’s true. Again, the most popular styles of wines in the United States are varietals - they will tell you what the wine is on the label - but they don’t all. For example, this wine right here, the Inglenook Reunion. Now, you see: name of the producer, and 1986 when it was harvested. You see “estate bottled” which means they bottled it on their property where the winery is - they did the bottling themselves. Some people outsource bottling. It doesn’t say the name of the grapes though, it just says “Reunion” and a little trademark (they copyrighted that name). And it says underneath that “Red Table Wine” from Napa Valley. So this did come from Napa, a specific area within California, so it makes it a little bit more expensive, a little bit more nuanced with specific characteristics, but all they’re telling you is that it’s red wine. That’s all they have to tell you. They don’t have to tell you what’s in it. We do happen to know that this is a blend of Cabernet and a few other things. When a winery does something like this they’re trying to brand something, trying to build a name for themselves, so you think, “When I have this I’m not drinking Cabernet, I’m drinking Reunion”.
Mike: In a nutshell, that’s California. Oh, it also always says somewhere on the bottle how big the bottle is. A regular bottle size is 750ml, and it has to say that on the bottle. It can be in tiny letters, it can be on the front, it can be on the back, but it’s got to be on there somewhere. Not really important, but that’s on the label.
Matt: If you know how big the bottle is, you’ve got a good start.
Mike: That’s about it. That should get us through California, so get out there and drink some good wine.
Mike: Or beer.
The first vines were planted in San Diego, CA by Spanish missionaries in the late 1700s. Commercial winemaking began in the 1820s. The Gold Rush of 1849 brought vineyards closer to the Sierra Foothills so the miners wouldn’t have to travel as far to meet their daily needs. In the 1850s, Agostin Haraszthy brought around 300 different types of European varieties to California, leading to the birth of California’s modern wine industry.
Anderson Valley where Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are grown to produce 
Most of the wines produced in California are made of the popular international or European grape varieties, though small vineyards with unique and delicious varieties can be found scattered throughout the state.
to give a generic overview (particularly since the areas under vine run about 600 miles from north to south and another 135 miles east to west). The soil in California is made of many different things due to the coming together of the Pacific tectonic plate and the North American tectonic plate (the cause of all those lovely earthquakes).