Bordeaux from America? (Or: A history of why that one dude corrected you about Champagne)
If you’ve ever picked up a glass of sparkling wine and made the mistake of calling it Champagne, you’ve probably been put in your place by that guy: “Actuallyyyyy, Champagne can only come from the Champagne region in France.”
The label might have tipped you off. Nowhere on American sparkling wine labels will you find the word “Champagne” (except under special circumstances—we’ll get there later). Since the 2006 Wine Trade Agreement, American winemakers have been largely forbidden from using European place names on their labels.
You might wonder: How did “Champagne” become interchangeable with “sparking wine” in the U.S. in the first place? Why would American winemakers use the names of European wine regions, like “Burgundy” or “Madeira,” to describe their wines? And when did the practice die out?
In the early days of the American wine industry, winemakers were free to call their wines whatever they wanted. Below, you’ll find a menu from 1907 from New York’s Fifth Avenue Hotel featuring “Sauternes” from California (and some real Sauternes, too):
A 1907 Fifth Avenue Hotel menu (from the NYPL’s “What’s On The Menu?” collection)
Sauternes, for the unfamiliar, is a region in Bordeaux that makes sweet, botrytised white wines from Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle.
What was the California winemaker trying to communicate to wine drinkers by labeling their decidedly-not-French wine “Sauternes”?
To understand why, you’ll need to know how winemakers label wine and what terms like “Sauternes” really mean. (You can skip this part if you’re familiar with wine labeling.) The most important thing to know is that there are two major ways to label wines: by varietal and by appellation.
Australian wines with varietal labeling (photo by Wikimedia Commons user Dssoobgh Rremyoo)
The United States and other New World wine regions tend to use varietal labeling. That is, most wine in these regions gets labeled with the variety of grape used to make it. This influences the way we think and talk about wine, too. If you ask an American about their favorite wines, you’ll hear something like, “I love Chardonnay” or “I’m a big Cab Sauv fan.”
Europeans, with a handful of notable exceptions, tend to use appellation labeling. Wine in Europe is usually labeled with the name of the place where it’s grown and made.
This is always confusing to Americans who don’t drink a lot of European wine and start panicking when the see a dense mass of French or Italian on a label. “What kind of grapes go in a Gevrey-Chambertin? What does Bolgheri taste like? Is that a grape variety? A person? The name of the winery?”
Wines from Bordeaux featuring appellation labeling (photo by Wikimedia Commons user Sungie HAU atimood)
But appellation labeling gets a lot less scary when you realize how easy and predictable it makes choosing wine, assuming you’re familiar with the region or can…y’know…Google it. For Europeans, place name equals wine style. Centuries of tradition and law in Europe spell out exactly what grapes and winemaking practices need to be used if a label bears a particular location’s name. Is it sweet or dry? Heavy or light? Peppery? Oaked? Acidic? The name will tell you.
If you open a wine labeled “Pauillac,” for example, you’ll find a dry, tannic, full-bodied red wine made chiefly from Cabernet Sauvignon. If you opened up the bottle and it contained, say, sweet Syrah, it’d make about as much sense as opening a ketchup bottle and finding mayonnaise.
What does this have to do with the California “Sauternes” on the hotel menu? Remember that, at that point, the American wine industry was in its relative infancy. Before American wines’ spectacular rise in quality and popularity, wine drinkers in the U.S. tended to buy imported wine from Europe. And European wines were labeled by appellation.
A 1912 Pennsylvania Lines railroad menu featuring Californian “Claret,” “Sauterne [sic] Type” and “Red Burgundy Type” wines (from the NYPL’s “What’s On The Menu?” collection)
This means that most Americans of the time didn’t know much about wine grapes—but they did know what popular European wines tasted like. If you asked an American wine drinker if he’d like a glass of Sangiovese or Pinot Noir, he’d be stumped. However, he could tell you that he liked a nice Chianti with dinner, while his wife was more fond of Burgundy (even if he couldn’t tell you where in the world Chianti and Burgundy were, or what grapes they used).
Because of this gap in consumer knowledge, American winemakers had trouble communicating what their wines tasted like without referring to similar European wines. Some resorted to adding descriptions on their labels, as with the one below, described as “a full-bodied mellow light wine.” Notice the lack of grape names, which would probably have just confused people.
Most winemakers resorted to describing ther wines using the European appellation closest to what they were selling. A sparkling wine might be labeled “Champagne,” while a fortified wine might be called “Port” or “Sherry.” A Pinot Noir would be “Burgundy” and a Merlot would be labeled “Bordeaux.” And that sweet dessert wine? “Sauternes.”
These terms came to be known as semi-generics—kind of like “Xerox” or “Kleenex.” You can see some Californian labels from various decades with semi-generic labeling in the gallery below.
Eventually, the U.S. wine industry yielded to pressure from the EU, which had long claimed—with some justification—that Euro-knockoff labels could confuse consumers about exactly what they were getting. In 2006, American winegrowers agreed to stop using semi-generics. That means no more California Champagne—or Prosecco, Cava, or Sekt. In turn, Europeans agreed not to use the names of American winegrowing regions in their own wines. (Can you imagine the furor if a bulk wine producer in Italy started calling their wines “Napa”?)
The new law didn’t actually change much in the American wine landscape. Why? Because by 2006, Americans had become much better acquainted with grape varieties, which meant that most producers had already started using varietal labeling. And for quality wine producers, putting out a wine with a semi-generic term on the label was increasingly considered…a little trashy.
However, a few semi-generics are still kicking around thanks to wine producers that were grandfathered into the agreement—that is, allowed to continue using European appellations on their existing products as long as the actual place of origin is prominently displayed. The majority are inexpensive wines from large producers (read: jug wines), like Gallo’s “Hearty Burgundy,” Korbel’s “California Champagne,” and Carlo Rossi’s “Chianti.”
We know it’s not really Champagne, but just for fun, try bringing some Korbel to a party and telling that guy what a great deal you got on 100% Genuine Champagne, straight from Guerneville. Bonus fun: see if he can point to Champagne on a map.
