How to: Decode Your Wine Label

I have watched enough SharkTank to know the importance of marketing through packaging.  A customer's first impression comes from the packaging and for wine that is the label.  However, personal experience has proven to me again and again that wine labels are often nothing short of a real pain in the ass.  There is no consistency from bottle to bottle and the label vocabulary is stuffed with jargon that can often be frustrating to try and sort through.  Buying wine shouldn't be headache inducing or use up your entire month's data frantically trying to Google every potential purchase.  A few simple steps and a bit of patience is all that stands between you and a great glass of wine tonight.

To begin, all you need a potential bottle of wine and your eyes:

Step One: Determine the Country of Origin 

This could be as simple as checking the language on the label.  Words in French?  French wine. Words in Italian? Italian Wine.  Many countries label in English so a bit more exploring may help indicate where the wine is from.  Look for names of places on the front or back label to help pinpoint where the wine is coming from.  Determining the country of origin is especially important as each country has its own special way of labeling

Step Two: Figure out the Varietal (Grape Type)
Knowing what grape the wine is made from is the number one indicator on what kind of a wine experience you're going to have.  If your wine is from the New World (likely these are the in-English labels) the grape type will be obviously listed.  However, the Old World places (think France, Italy, Spain, etc.) generally do not label by grape varietal and instead label by place.  Here is a short breakdown of labeling for two of the major Old World wine growing countries:

• France: With the exception of Alsace, everywhere in France labels by place (also called appellation).  France's wine regulations specify that each growing region is only permitted to grow certain grapes.  The French put the place the grape was grown in where in the New World the grape type would be listed.  So, a French wine, for example, would be labeled as Chablis.  It is the consumer's job to know the grape is Chardonnay. This would be a good place to Google if you don't have these things memorized.
• Italy: Italy can label their wines in one of four different ways (I know it's a real pain in the ass). It could be labeled, like France, by place (ex. Chianti is a place and it is our job to know the grape is Sangiovese).  It could be labeled just by the grape as it's done in the New World (ex. Falanghina from the Campania region is the Falanghina grape).  It could be a combination of the grape and the place and the dead give away for this is a de or d'.  This wine is labeled literally as the grape from the place (ex. Dolcetto d'Alba is the Dolcetto grape from Alba region of Piedmonte).  Finally, the wine could be given a Proprietary or Fantasy Name. This has nothing to do with the grape or place and is often the brand.  A bit more looking on this type of label will be needed to find the grape varietal.

Step Three: What is the Wine's Style?

Is your wine sweet, sparkling, or dry?  There are a few words that will indicate the style and, like the varietal, are good to know to figure out what kind of a wine you're getting:

• Botrytis/Noble Rod: This is a sweet wine that has been infected with a fungus (yes it is perfectly safe and wine growers do this on purpose) that when pressed and fermented makes the wine sweeter.
• Late Harvest: Another sweet wine.  The grapes are harvested later in the growing season and have more developed sugar.
• Champagne: A sparkling wine.  This type of sparkling wine was fermented in the bottle and does not necessarily need to be from the Champagne region of France.
• Prosecco: Sparkling wine again.  This wine has been fermented and then placed in a big tank where the winemaker will then inject carbon dioxide into it (much like carbonated beverages).
• Reserve: Beware of this one.  In the US, it has no legal meaning and could be slapped on any bottle of the producer wants to and is often done to upsell.  However, in Spain and Italy placing Riserva or Crianza on the bottle does indicate the wine has gone through a longer aging period.
• A note: French Wines will also require you to know the style of the place.  For example, Barsac makes a sweet, Botrytis affected Semillon wine.  Again, Google is your friend.

Step Four: What Does the Year Mean?

Most wines will have a year printed somewhere on the front label.  Called the vintage, the year tells you what year the grapes for that wine was harvested.  Super wine nerds get interested in this as differences in the same place from year to year are often expressed in each vintage's wine. You'll notice as you do more looking at most Champagnes that they don't have a vintage.  In order for Champagne producers to put out a consistent tasting product, they will mix grapes from a variety of vintages.

Step Five: Who Made the Wine?

Here, we are looking for the producer of the wine.  Often, it is the other big letters that aren't the place or grape.  This is helpful to know if you enjoyed the particular producer's (or brand's) wine and would like to repurchase it again. 

Step Six: Pop the Cork and Enjoy 

Reading wine labels is something that takes practice.  However, the more informed you are on the difference between wine labels the better chance you have at picking out the wine you want.  Wine Folly has an amazing piece on the basics of wine labels with pictures of different labels for a more visual breakdown.  

While the wine label may seem like it is in a completely different language (literally in many cases), it is just with a few new vocabulary words and a bit of strategic Googling that an exciting new fermented grape juice experience can begin.  I do think, however, that us wine drinkers should start a campaign to standardize the damn things and make everyone's lives easier.  Who is with me?

On My Plate

As a CIA student, the question I get asked second most often is "What amazing food do you cook for yourself??"  Depending on who is doing the asking, my answer varies slightly.  In general, especially during the Associate's Program where I more or less spent 8 hours a day cooking and cleaning, I want nothing less than to break out my knives and a pan to create really anything.  I'll be perfectly honest, most days even the thought of scrambling eggs sounds like too much work. (I know you're wondering so the most asked question I receive is "Has anything ever been thrown at you?" The answer to that is no.  What is this the 1990s?)

One of the greatest things about the CIA is that the majority of the curriculum focuses on feeding the student body; kitchens of varying cuisines and service styles produce food that I use my student meal plan for.  One of the worst things about the CIA is that all of that wonderful food is not available on weekends.  Imagine a world of 2,000 food junkies starved two days out of the week and you've got the CIA on weekends.

Here is a small look at what a few meals during my week look like:

Friday Dinner

On Friday evenings, I usually stop by The Egg and use my leftover meal plan "points" to pick up a few meals for the weekend.  The class producing my dinner, High Volume Production Cookery, focuses on large-scale recipes and producing food for the masses and is the last class students take before externship.  The food itself is generally hit or miss and on Friday I was lucky to pick a hit.  I chose grilled salmon with a beurre blanc, pasta al forno, and roasted sweet potatoes with kale.  Not pictured is the Corona I convinced myself I deserved after a long week and my current Netflix obsession: The Crown.

Saturday Morning

A normal weekend treat for myself is a trip (or two...) to Starbucks especially on Saturday mornings between loads of laundry.  This Saturday was particularly warm for mid-February in the Hudson Valley and the weather inspired me to get one of my favorite summer drinks: a Mango Iced-Tea Lemonade.  In an effort to avoid cooking in the pristine, industry-grade kitchen in my townhouse, I also picked up a breakfast sandwich with a soggy "croissant," ham, eggs, and gouda cheese.  The bakers have spoiled me for three years with the world's best croissants and nothing ever compares.  Alas, a crappy Starbucks sandwich is still better than washing the dishes I would have used to make breakfast.

Sunday Evening

Before anyone (especially my mom) starts to worry that I didn't eat for 36 hours, I did.  In the interest of honesty, I actually got McDonalds for dinner on Saturday.  It's Shamrock Shake season and I am addicted to this milkshake.  For Sunday evening, however, I microwaved a meal I'd also picked up on Friday from The Egg: roasted beef top round with mushroom jus, mashed sweet potatoes, and pasta al forno. I paired it with my favorite varietal at the moment, Riesling.  This particular wine was from Bex Winery of Germany and for $9.99 was a damn good Riesling.  It's minerality and crisp acidity did a kick ass job of cutting through the richness of my meal.

Monday Lunch

One of the more underrated kitchens, in my opinion, is Modern Banquets.  This kitchen is the very first production kitchen students cook in and focuses on buffet and banquet style foods.  Between my Tuesday/Thursday classes, I always get Banquets.  The chef, Chef Reilly, does an amazing job of pushing his students to put out some pretty consistently tasty food.  Lunch on Monday was consommé, arugula salad, shrimp and grits, sauteed spinach, grilled vegetables, salmon with quinoa and rice pilaf, and risotto cakes with pepper coulis.  The only thing that could have made this lunch better would have been a glass of last night's Bex Reisling.

Tuesday Dinner 

Guess what? I cooked this!  One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Advanced Cooking.  The class is a weird combination of Chopped, Top Chef, and a CIA class where each week is either a mystery basket around a theme (offals and vegan cuisine for example) or a pre-designed menu around a theme.  This week was flatbreads and we could decide what to cook before coming to class.  We decided to make Piadina, an Italian flatbread from the Campania region.  Our savory expression included a black pepper and parsley ricotta spread, prosciutto, arugula, and a balsamic reduction.  For the sweet, we topped the Piadina with a Nutella mousse made from Nutella, mascarpone cheese, and whipped cream topped with dark chocolate and pistachios.  Not pictured is the 2 cocktails and 3 wines we drank with our feast.

To be clear, I love to cook.  Food was my first love (sorry wine and sorry boyfriend...) and I love the thrill of the line.  However, cooking fatigue is real and sometimes you really just want someone else to cook your dinner.  Really, this has all been a long-winded defense of why I'm not cooking my own damn food: I don't want to and I have spent enough time cooking other people's dinners. Eating is one of my favorite activities and I am always ready to eat.

What are some of your favorite meals for when you don't feel like cooking?