HOW-TO: Read a French Wine Label

As an American, buying french wine is intimidating. Wine is much more ingrained in the French culture than it is here in the States, and they seem to revel in exposing our ignorance. Take a French wine label, which seems to say: If you don’t know what this means, it’s not meant for you. But it’s a ruse! You don’t need to speak French to figure out the joys of French wine.

The important thing to remember is that the French label their wines by region instead of by grape variety. This is different than in the U.S. Think about it: when you order wine, you probably ask for “Chardonnay” or “Merlot” but you don’t say “I’ll have the Oregon red house wine.” French regions are known for a specific style of wine making, and there are certain grapes that are native to each region. There is great history behind how the regions were formed. They were delineated by monks who popularized the growth of wine hundreds of years ago.

Labels describe the wine from the more general to the more specific (specificity often denotes the wine quality):

France --> Region (Burgundy, Boujoulais, etc) --> Sub-region (Chablis, etc) -->  Village --> Vineyard.
The lowest quality of wines are Vin de Table which is seldom exported, or Vin de France. These are very generic wine, meant for the most basic of consumption, and are seldom seen in the States.
Vin de Pays are wines from the not-regulated regions of the countryside. They can be wonderful rustic wines, but lack the regulation on grape growth and production methods. You can find these here, all they tell you is that the wine can be produced from grapes from all over
AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) indicates the grapes come from a specific wine region (Appelletion Bordeaux Controlee, would mean coming from the Bourdeaux region, for example), as defined by France’s wine regulations. This tells you the grapes came from this region, only.

You might find some wines labeled Grand Cru or Primier Cru. This designation developed relatively recently in an attempt to highlight the best examples from specific regions.

This info, coupled with knowledge of some winery names, is meant to give you an indication of the quality of wine--although its usually an even better indication of the cost. We recommend you take this info with you when you visit the wine store and ask lots of questions when there. What we’re learning is that just knowing how to read the labels isn’t enough. You have to try lots of different wines to figure out what you really like. Choosing an AOC wine will give you more confidence that this winery is putting out similar wine bottle-over-bottle, but you can expect to easily find out what it will taste like, too. You owe it to yourself. And, if your wine seller can’t provide a general description of that particular wine’s taste, consider finding a new wine store.