It may be the Yuletide season, Readers, but I am not inclined to extend generosity to those who mangle the Mother-Tongue and allow way too much wiggle-room in the definition of words. The worst offenders, other than politicians, bureaucrats and sociologists, are advertising copywriters and public relations/marketing interns. Here’s the example that lit a fire under my ire:

The back label of the JCB No 81 Chardonnay 2009, Sonoma Coast, tells us that the wine is “Alluring. Ephemeral. Insatiable.” “JCB” stands for Jean-Charles Boisset, president of Boisset Wine Estates, owner of, among other properties and brands, Buena Vista Winery, DeLoach Vineyard, Lockwood Vineyard, Lyeth Estate, Fog Mountain and Raymond Vineyards in California and Bouchard Aîné & Fils, Domaine de la Vougeraie, J. Moreau & Fils and French Rabbit in France. The JCB line represents the company’s extension into producing fairly limited edition wines from vineyards primarily in Sonoma County. (Image from harrods.com)

Let’s look at these adjectives.

Alluring. I occasionally use “alluring” in reviews to mean that a wine draws the taster in seductively and irresistibly, with a sense of style and glamor; it’s a rather abstract and subjective concept, but one that I think can be employed legitimately and that readers readily grasp. So, O.K. on that.

Ephemeral. I think that the word is incorrect for the wine. According to The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged (1987), ephemeral means “lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory.” One might apply the word, especially in the realm of “transitory,” to certain wines, say the driest and more delicate rosés or fresh and quaffable white wines such as Vinho Verde or South African chenin blancs. Applied, however, to a Sonoma Coast chardonnay that’s rich and full-bodied and solidly oaked (though nothing out of the ordinary), “ephemeral” would be a negative term; the context is completely wrong.

Insatiable. Here’s a vivid model of incorrect word choice. The RHDEL2 tells us that “insatiable” means “incapable of being satisfied or appeased.” A glutton may be insatiable in his hunger; a sadist may be insatiable in his blood-lust; a dictator may be insatiable in his quest for power. The application of the word to a bottle of wine is nonsensical or, if you prefer, ignorant.

In fact, the marketing device for the JCB wines rests on the three-word trope. For the JCB No 1, a cabernet sauvignon, the figure is “Voluptuous. Opulent. Incorrigible.” For No 22, a pinot noir, the scheme is “Intimate. Tumultuous. Intense.” And, bizarrely, No 8, a pinot noir dry rosé, receives the flamboyant encomium of “Rebellious. Capricious. Seductive.”

While voluptuousness and opulence are virtues in cabernet sauvignon wines in some circles — not usually mine — (and they seem redundant anyway), “incorrigible” is another example of a copywriter simply not knowing what words mean. If a chardonnay truly were “bad beyond correction or reform; impervious to restraints or punishment; willful; unruly; uncontrollable,” I think that I would leave it on the shelf and try something else. “Tumultuous” for a pinot noir? (“full of tumult or riotousness; marked by disturbance and uproar; … disorderly or noisy; … highly agitated”) The last thing I want is a disorderly and highly agitated pinot noir. And how would you feel about a rosé that was insubordinate and erratic?

Friends, this is the Silliness of Vocabulary Overkill, the result of poorly prepared writers trying too hard to sound impressive, a common symptom in the world of public relations and marketing. I say that it’s time to retire the concept of the back-label hard sell and storytelling that dominates in New World wines, especially California and Australia, and let the product speak for itself. Tell me about the wine, if that’s necessary, but keep the copy brief and to the point. And please, keep a dictionary on the desk.

In most European wine regions, place matters. That’s why in Burgundy, for example, and in the Rhone Valley, in Germany, in much of Italy, the term most prominently displayed on a label will be the name of a village or commune, often accompanied by the name of a vineyard. The name of the estate, producer or winery will be in smaller print at the bottom of the label or off to the side or up on a neck label. The implication is that the most crucial factor in producing a great wine is not the human hand and mind, as helpful as they might be, but great terroir, that is, all the geographical, geological and climatic elements, whether as large as the weather patterns or minute as a worm or deep as the soil and bedrock, that influence the vineyard, the vines and the grapes.

When the 19th Century wine pioneers in California were growing grapes and making wine, they often labeled their products in such a way that American consumers would relate them to European counterparts, though these resemblances were often based more on romance than reality. Thus the Claret and Hock, the Burgundy (made from anything except pinot noir) and Sauterne (without the final “s”), the Chianti and French Colombard and Chablis — remember Gallo’s Chablis Blanc, in case you couldn’t tell it was white? — that graced the tables of American for many decades of the 20th Century. After Prohibition, however, and especially after World War II, producers in California began to evince independence from Europe and pride in their own achievements by highlighting the names of their wineries and the principal grape in the wine on bottles, thus giving birth to the varietal labeling that dominates the New World wine industries today and has even crossed back over the Atlantic to show up in Europe. “Hock” image from weimax.com.

So, I’m fascinated by the label for this wine, because it’s an attempt to market an American wine based not on the name of the winery or producer and not on the name of the grape but — on the model of much of Europe — on the name of a federally-recognized vineyard region or American Viticultural Area, as the official term expresses it. Notice, in fact, how much the label resembles a label of a Premier Cru vineyard Burgundy (as in the Chambolle-Musigny Les Amoureuses above).

The most prominent feature on this label is Red Mountain, granted AVA status by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) in 2001. Red Mountain, not so much a mountain as a steep, long southwest-facing slope of deep gravelly soil, lies within the Yakima Valley AVA, which is part of the sprawling Columbia Valley AVA; with only about 600 acres under cultivation, Red Mountain, known for its distinctively tannic and minerally cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah, wines of grain and substance, is the smallest of Washington state’s grape-growing regions. It’s close to Benton City — “A Tuscany Sort of Place” — pop. 2,800. The application for AVA recognition was initiated by Hedges Family Estate and supported by Kiona Vineyards, Blackwood Canyon Vintners, Sandhill Winery, Seth Ryan Winery and Terra Blanca Winery.

The proprietors of Hedges Family Estate are Tom and Anne-Marie Hedges, who married in 1976 — she is from France’s Champagne region, he is from eastern Washington — and in 1986 launched American Wine Trade Inc. to export wine to Europe. The first wine from Hedges Cellars came in 1987, after which the couple segued toward vineyard acquisition and the founding of a real facility. Winemaker for Hedges is Tom Hedges’ brother Pete.

So, the label of the wine in question is from the Hedges stable. While Hedges produces other wines from the Red Mountain appellation, the name of the winery and the grapes take precedence on the labels, as is typical with American wines. This one, however, modeled, as I said, on certain French examples, is produced by Descendants Liegeois Dumont — seen at the bottom of the label — a combination of the two names of Anne-Marie Hedges’ family in Champagne. Under “Red Mountain” is the name of the vineyard — Les Gosses — and under that the special name for this production “Cuvée Marcel Dupont,” Anne-Marie Hedges’ grandfather, and, finally and modestly, Descendants Liegeois Dumont.

A major difference between the Red Mountain “Les Gosses” designation on this wine and, for example, Chambolle-Musigny “Les Amoureuses” is the sense of history and reputation. All lovers of fine wine know that Chambolle-Musigny is one of the stellar wine villages of the Cote de Nuit section of Burgundy and that Les Amoureuses is a Premier Cru vineyard (deserving elevation to Grand Cru status) whose renown stretches back to the 19th Century. Forgive my bluntness, but who the hell knows anything about Red Mountain?

Marketing California wines or American wines generally, I think, would be difficult, though more successful, theoretically, if the AVA indicated is very well-known for the quality of the wines in produces, focused on particular grape varieties, or small and fairly unique. Nobody is going to buy a wine based on the words Central Coast or North Coast displayed prominently on the label; the scope is too vast, the identifying characteristics too vague, the quality too variable. (The same argument is true, of course, for huge, tractless regions like the Loire Valley or just Toscana.) I mean, I would be interested in a pinot noir that boldly announced its terroir as Santa Lucia Highlands or Santa Rita Hills or cabernet sauvignon whose label was emblazoned with Mount Veeder or Howell Mountain. And if some brash producer featured the seldom-seen Fair Play AVA (in the Sierra Foothills) as the paramount element in its label design, I would probably take a chance on it, if only because it’s very small — only 350 acres of vines — and because it’s the highest elevation AVA in California. (Yeah, I had to look it up.)

I may be taking the label of the Red Mountain “Les Gosses” Cuvée Marcel Dupont 2009, Descendants Liegeois Dupont, way too seriously; there’s a good chance that this homage to French practices on the part of the Hedges family is purely whimsical. Still, and despite earlier caveats, I applaud this tiny effort at place-based nomenclature.

The wine, by the way, is superb. One hundred percent syrah — a grape that takes to the Red Mountain terrain the way fondant icing snuggles up to a petit four — it aged 14 months in a combination of American (65%), French (30%) and Hungarian (5%) oak, half new barrels, half neutral. Heady aromas of mint and eucalyptus, black currants and blueberries are woven with briers and brambles, earth and slate; a few minutes in the glass bring up traces of cloves and sandalwood, smoke and ash and moss, rose petals, potpourri and bitter chocolate. Right, try to stop sniffing that. In the mouth, the wine is dense and chewy, an impermeable sifting of finely-milled tannins, burnished wood and polished granitic elements that gradually unveil deep spicy and floral roots that support ripe and macerated black and blue fruit flavors in a package that’s quite fresh and vibrant and ultimately beautifully balanced and integrated. Drink now through 2015 or ’16. Alcohol content is 13.5 percent. 986 cases. Excellent. Suggested retail price is $25; I paid $30 in Memphis.

So it’s harmless, right, to label a wine Bitch. Or Sexy Bitch or Sweet Bitch or Royal Bitch or Crazy Bitch or any other of the 48 “bitch” names for which producers or marketers have applied to the TTB (common shorthand for the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) that oversees and approves labels for alcoholic beverages in the U.S.

I mean this is all just a joke, right, and if I am increasingly bothered by the proliferation of such “humorous” bitch labels then I must be a prude or completely lacking in sense of humor or just plain old, because the bitch labels, the critter labels, the goofy labels, the surreal labels, the double ententre labels — Pinot Evil, Herding Cats, Plungerhead, Screw Kappa Napa, Rude Boy and Rude Girl, Hair of the Dingo, Full Montepulciano, Smoking Parrot, Arrogant Frog and on and on — are intended, we are told, to draw the attention of young people who (quoting a press release) “are intrigued by fun wines freed of the burden of snobbery and geeky Old School connoisseurship.”

Actually, I’m not a prude, and I have a pretty active and slightly bent sense of humor — I won’t comment on the age issue — but words have meanings and consequences, and I think that the “bitch” label phenomenon — apparently launched by the R Winery in Australia, a collaboration between winemaker Chris Ringland and American importer Dan Philips that ran into serious financial trouble last year — offers a serious critique on attitudes toward women in America.

What is a bitch? A female dog, to be sure. Also a complaining woman; a competitive woman; a woman with a superior attitude; a demanding or assertive woman; a woman who denies a man sex; in short — women, because to many segments of American culture, all women are competitive, demanding, assertive, balls-breaking bitches. Unless, of course, they manifest the other side of femininity, promulgated in mainstream Hollywood movies and television sit-coms, as the sweet, non-threatening girls you would be proud to take home to meet Mom and Dad. (Maybe not Dad.) Hiphop, one of the dominant if not the dominant form of pop music in America (and an incredible influence on world culture), is defined by its deeply misogynist stance on women. Who hasn’t stopped at a red light next to a thunderously booming sound system that you feel in the marrow of your defenseless bones that churns out the refrains of “Slap the bitch,” “Fuck the bitch” and “Kill the bitch”?

Whatever advances were attained by women and their male supporters in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, popular culture has succeeded in dumbing down or, at least in the collective imagination, turning into a charade, a caricature of progress. Look at the two women involved in the latest public displays of unhinged male prowess, the still-unnamed chambermaid assaulted in a New York hotel — excuse me, allegedly assaulted — by IMF director Dominque Strass-Kahn, and Mildred Patricia Baena, the housekeeper who worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver for 20 years and who after an affair with Schwarzenegger gave birth to his child in 1997. Both women are being demonized on websites and blogs all over the world, the maid for daring to accuse a man far her superior in wealth, status and importance, and Baena for not being hot enough. Like, who do these gold-digging bitches think they are?

There’s nothing wrong with humor and irreverence in the naming of wines and the design of their labels; if irreverence and creativity bring more people into the wine-drinking fold, I’m all for it. Do we, however, have to continue to demean women in such automatic, casual, degrading manner? Let’s have a moratorium on “bitch”‘ labels. Let’s be better than that.

Bitch Grenache image, slightly altered, from aglassafterwork.com

Take a look at this label. Look at the name, Adolfo Hurtado. That’s the winemaker for Cono Sur, actually given credit for his work on the front label of a wine he made. We expect books to carry their authors’ names prominently; we assume that movies will list their writers and directors. Would you download a song that didn’t indicate who wrote the piece and performed it? Would you attend a concert of classical music advertised as “Music Played by Some Guys in Tuxedos” without the names of the composers and musicians?

Yet it’s surprising how often winemakers are not named on the labels of the wines they devoted their lives to, often in an accumulation of knowledge and experience that goes beyond the ordinary. Labels often carry the names of the winery’s founders, owners or proprietors or even the name of the artist who designed the label; far more seldom is the winemaker named, yet he or she was responsible for the wine that’s in the bottle.

I’m speaking primarily of “New World” wines: the United States, Chile, Argentina, Australia and so forth. Matters are regarded differently in Europe. No one expects a winemaker’s name to be displayed on a label from Bordeaux because all elements are subsumed under the rubric of the chateau and its estate; winemakers come and go, is the implication, but Chateau Lafite Rothschild remains. In Burgundy what matters is the vineyard, the village and the producer, and the same is true in Germany.

California, however, gave birth to the chatty back-label, to descriptions, paeans, poems, diatribes, marketing, self-aggrandizement, and many, if not most, New World producers follow suit. Rarely, though, in the verbiage, is the winemaker given credit. How rarely? I made an informal survey of 65 bottles in my reviewing rack and refrigerator, looking mainly at California wines but also some from Oregon, Washington, Argentina, Chile and Australia. The division was 48 with no winemaker indicated and 17 that named the winemaker; that’s 74 percent of the labels without the winemaker’s name.

I think that’s a shame, and I promise that from now on, whenever possible, I will include — for good or ill — the name of a winemaker with my reviews.

So, here’s this little bottle of framboise raspberry liqueur, called Chateau Monet. (This is a liqueur, not a traditional eau-de-vie.) There is, indeed, a depiction of a chateau on the label. The squat, bulbous bottle is satisfyingly old-fashioned looking, as if the producer went to some trouble to acquire bottles that resembled those used, say, in the 18th Century. “How quaint, how authentic, how French,” we think. Then we look at the back label and read: “Prepared and bottled in the USA by La Maison Coulombe, Lewiston, Me & Londonderry, NH.”

Yes, once again we have been victimized by what marketing people call “foreign branding.” Foreign branding grows from the idea, apparently inherent in American life and culture, that anything with a foreign name just has to be better than something made in America. Do you want to get a massage or a Swedish massage? Do you want some onion soup or some French onion soup? A pizza with a lot of cheese or a Tuscan Quattro Fromaggi Pizza?

The best-known example of foreign branding is Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which millions of Americans, including myself for many years, thought came from Sweden or Denmark: “Wow, no wonder it’s so good!” The company has been owned by General Mills since 1983, but Häagen-Dazs was founded in The Bronx in 1959 by Polish immigrants Reuben and Rose Mattus. The name, deliberately concocted to sound Scandinavian, is Duncan Hines spelled or spoken sort of inside-out and reinforced by some consonants and an umlaut. The first store opened in Brooklyn in 1975, and the rest is foreign branding history.

Another example, dear to the hearts of American folk and media culture, is the Ginsu Knife, heavily advertised on late-night television starting in 1978 in those unforgettable commercials that began, “In Japan, the hand can be used as a knife” and ending with a line that became embedded in common speech: “But wait, there’s more!” Far from being made in Japan, the knives, called Eversharp, were originally manufactured in Freemont, Ohio, where they were discovered by a pair of wily entrepreneurs who turned the brand into a raging success: “As Seen on TV!”

It’s no wonder that the 19th Century wine industry in American relied completely on European models and names to sell their wares to consumers more used to terms like “Burgundy,” “Chianti,” “Sauternes” and “Madeira” than a product called, simply, “California Red Wine.” Varietal labeling didn’t really develop in California until after the end of Prohibition, though of course many wines continued (and continue) to exploit the foreign branding concept. This idea applies not only to wineries called Chateau This and Clos du That but to brands like Hearty Burgundy and Chablis Blanc and the old (and actually tasty) Green Hungarian, made by Paul Masson; we drank gallons of these wines, back in the day.

The EU frowns on the use of European place names on American wine labels, and a series of trade agreements have been instituted to prevent producers in America from plastering the terms Sherry, Port and Champagne on labels while Europeans will not pretend that their wines were made in the Napa Valley. (I mean, did they ever? Was there a “Napa Valley Riesling” from Germany?) The trick is that some veteran manufacturers of sparkling wine in California — Korbel and Gallo –were permitted to retain the use of “champagne” on their sparkling wine labels, you know, for old-times’ sake. That loophole seems pretty egregious to me, and also to French trade groups, which have mounted advertising campaigns against it.

“St. Clair Burgundy” label (it says in tiny type that it was printed in St. Louis) is from labeltrader.com, a fascinating site for collectors of all sort of antique paper labels.

As many people know, Randall Grahm, the canny proprietor of Bonny Doon Vineyard, is committed to listing the ingredients of all of his wines on the back labels, starting with the vintage of 2007. One would assume that this would be a simple proposition; the ingredient of wine is grapes. In fact, the wines from Heller Estate say exactly this on the back labels, as in: “Ingredients: 100% organic malbec grapes.” There you go.

But matters are never so easy for Grahm. Here, for example, is the ingredients list for the recently released Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare 2007 “Pink Wine of the Earth” (How’s that for an appellation?): “47% grenache, 27% cinsault, 14% syrah, 7% grenache blanc, 5% roussanne grapes, tartaric acid, sulfur dioxide, pectinase.”

In the interest of complete transparency, Grahm goes farther, deeper: “In the winemaking process the following were utilized: Yeast hulls, bentonite, yeast nutrients, French oak barrels, untoasted oak chips, organic skim milk, copper sulfite.”

By this time, Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Wine-Drinker, standing in the retail shop trying to decided what wine to take home and drink with a ham sandwich, puts this bottle back on the shelf, muttering, “I’ll take my rosé without the skim milk, organic or not, thank you very much.”

It seems to me, in other words, that this is an instance in which complete transparency could backfire. How much do people actually need to know about how wine is made, when they just, you know, want a glass of wine with lunch?

Now it’s true that these constituents are traditional and harmless in winemaking, though some people are allergic to sulfur. Most of them are used to clarify the wine and “fine” it, as the term is for drawing particles to the bottom of the tank or cask to get rid of them. That’s the case with bentonite and skim milk, which is used in the form of casein. None of these elements is left in the wine when it is bottled. Pectinase is used to settle grape solids in the must, before the wine is sent to tanks or casks. Who, I ask, really needs this technical knowledge? Whose pleasure is increased thus?

On the other hand, the Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare 2007 is a delightful rosé. Sporting an entrancing ruddy watermelon color, the wine offers beguiling notes of melon, strawberry and plump. ripe peach with a hint of tart cranberry. Flavors are consistent with the bouquet, adding, though, strains of darker and slightly spicy raspberry. The wine is crisp and lively, just off-dry, with a dry, bracing finish that brings in a bit of dried herbs, a layer of chalk-like minerals. We drank this at home with salmon tacos. Thoroughly charming and delicious. Very good+ and Good Value at about $15, though I have seen it on the Internet for $12.

Closed with a screw-cap, as all wines from Bonny Doon are. Production is 7,800 cases.

Visit BonnyDoonVineyard.com.

Randall Grahm, founder, owner and winemaker of Bonny Doon Vineyard, likes to stay ahead of the curve. He was one of the first winemakers in California to take up seriously the principles of biodynamic farming, in 2003. He now finishes all of his products, not just the inexpensive ones, with screw-caps. He actually sold part of his brands and vineyards in June 2006 so he could focus on the biodynamic Ca’ del Solo vineyard, reducing his production from 425,000 cases to 35,000.

The latest innovation from this dedicated, outspoken and sometimes eccentric producer can be found on the back labels on two recently released white wines from vintage 2007: a list of ingredients. That’s right, beginning with the whites from 2007 and the reds from 2006, all wines from Bonny Doon will indicate the ingredients therein. The wines so marked presently are the Bonny Doon Ca’ del Solo Vineyard Albarino 2007 (about $20) and the Ca’ del Solo Muscat 2007 (about $17), both from Monterey County, and both lovely, artfully-made wines, floral- and mineral-laced, swooning with soft, macerated citrus and stone-fruit flavors. The Muscat offers a touch of sweetness.

The principal ingredient in wine — at the risk of creating a “Big Duh” moment — is grapes. Well, one might think, there it is.

Grahm, however, in the interests of disclosure and consumer awareness and as a move toward “internal discipline,” includes on the ingredients list sulfur dioxide, indigenous yeast and organic yeast hulls, bentonite and cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate).

Now we already now that wine producers use tiny amounts of sulfur dioxide in white wines to prevent oxidation and bacterial growth. The federal government requires on every bottle of wine sold in the United States the words “Contains Sulfites,” because a small (or minuscule) portion of the population is allergic to sulfur. Yeast, well that’s a given, but is yeast actually an ingredient? Isn’t that rather like listing “heat” as an ingredient on loaves of bread? I mean, the point of fermentation is that yeast turns the grape sugars into alcohol (and carbon dioxide) and in the process largely disappears. The amount of alcohol in a wine is also mandated by federal law to be enumerated on labels (of all alcoholic beverages). Any yeast cells left in the wine would be removed by a light filtering.

Even more curious is the inclusion of bentonite, a clay, used to stabilize white and rose wines and remove proteins, and cream of tartar, used to remove tartrate crystals from wine. Racking wines and subtly filtering them remove the bentonite and the cream of tartar and the crystals from the finished wine, so none of these materials are left. So, they’re not ingredients, are they? The word “ingredient” derives from the present participle of the Latin ingredi, “to enter,” but after the bentonite and cream of tartare enter the wine, they, well, you know, they exit.

I don’t mean to make merry at the expense of Bonny Doon and Randall Grahm — well, I do a little — but what the labels on these wines really indicate aren’t ingredients but techniques, and not innovative techniques but long-established traditions in wine-making; historically, winemakers have used all sorts of natural substances, including egg whites and isinglass, to clarify wines. Grahm says in a Bonny Doon press release: “We hope other winemakers will be encouraged to also adopt less interventionist practices and rely less upon an alphabet soup of additives to ‘improve’ their wines.”

Bentonite and cream of tartar, however, aren’t “additives” and they’re not “interventionist”; they are purely natural elements that do their simple work and disappear from or are eliminated from the finished wine. Read the ingredients list on a package of Twinkies; there are some additives, and they’re all right there in the Twinkie. There are plenty of contemporary interventionist methods in winemaking to get hot and bothered about — micro-oxygenation, reverse osmosis, oak powder and so on — but dropping a handful of cream of tartar into a tank of white wine is not one of them.

No, of course, Grahm knows that bentonite is not an additive and what he’s really after is for winemakers to join in employing the most basic and natural methods in winemaking, but I think on these issues consumers need either a bit more or even a tad less information.

On the other hand — and there’s always an other hand — Grahm, while typically a fanatic (if not a fun-loving fantasist), is working today at an extraordinarily high level of purity and intensity in his wines. I am and will remain a complete skeptic about the efficacy or the necessity of the extreme forms of biodynamic farming methods, but I’ll put those caveats out of my mind while sipping Bonny Doon’s Albarino 2007, a supremely seductive (yet spare and slightly austere) wine that I rate Excellent and my favorite of this pair.

The strange objects on these labels, which look like condoms wearing little fur coats, depict the “sensitive crysallization” of the individual wines. The press materials don’t reveal how these “sensitive crystallizations” occur, but when Grahm writes, of the Muscat 2007, “well-defined vacuoles reflect the powerful aromatic potential” and “finely textured crystals reach out to the end of the periphery reflecting the vine’s connection to the soil,” I cannot help thinking that “sensitive crystallization” is a synonym for “smoke and mirrors.”

Visit bonnydoonvineyard.com.

The French used to jeer at Americans for the health warnings required on the back labels of American wines and wines imported from other countries. “Zut alors,” they would sneer, “we are adults. We know how to drink wine. It is part of our French culture and heritage. You sissy American worry-warts!”

But ha-ha to you, Pierre, now the French, who are undergoing a national turmoil of political correctness — packages of snack foods in France carry directives to eat more fruit and vegetables — are seeing mandatory warning labels on the back labels of their wines.

Worse, though, far worse — and thanks to the vigilant Tom Wark at Fermentation for pointing this out last Thursday and providing links — is that a county court in Paris recently ruled that a story in the newspaper Le Parisien about Champagne, an editorial piece (not a paid advertisement) that offered recommendations, prices and details about the champagne houses, amounted to a form of advertising. The court said — I’m quoting a story by Oliver Styles on decanter.com for Jan. 10 — that the article “was intended to promote sales of alcoholic beverages in exercising a psychological effect on the reader that incited him or her to buy alcohol.”

A spokesman for the French National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction added, “Any communication in favour of an alcoholic drink, such as a series of articles in favour of Champagne, constitutes advertising and is therefore subject to the public health code.”

The implications of this move on freedom of the press are horrendous. Will newspaper articles about the drug industry and specific medicines have to carry long sidebars about proper dosage and possible side-effects? Will newspaper stories about the automobile industry be required to state: “Buckle Up for Safety: It’s the Law”? Must a piece about the merger of fast-food chains include a box with a black border that describes the dangers of trans-fats and childhood obesity?

And think about this. When you’re served a bottle of wine in a restaurant, the waiter shows you the front of the bottle but not the back. Are we entering a situation in which waiters will be required to display the front label — “Sir, Chateau Le Chien Perdu 2004″ — and then the back label — “And, the obligatory health warning, as authorized by Ordinance 2451.” Or the waiter dribbles a splash in your glass for you to evaluate, leans down and whispers confidentially, “Sir, be sure when you leave the restaurant not to operate any heavy machinery. Fork lifts, drill-presses, you know.” Or perhaps wine lists themselves will have to carry health warnings at the bottom of every page.

And then there are wine blogs. Oh, yes, do you think we will be exempt?

In order to forestall that eventuality — because all things are possible in this world — I will go ahead and provide the warning now:

The BiggerThanYourHead Warning Label

Warning:
1. This blog may incite you to purchase and drink wine, and that wine may taste to good you, leading you to purchase another bottle.
2. The wine that this blog incites you to purchase may match the food in your lunch or dinner so perfectly that you will be transported to a state of complete satisfaction.
3. This blog may inspire you to seek out many different styles and types of wines, leading you to expand your awareness, knowledge and pleasure.
4. Since you’re an adult and already know that drinking too much wine or other alcoholic beverages may result in temporary impairment or, in the case of desperately prolonged consumption, permanent health problems, this blog expects you to drink moderately, to behave yourself and not act like a freakin’ maniac and bring harm to yourself and others.

Two weeks ago I posted a piece to BTYH about the lack of official regulation of such terms as “reserve,” “private reserve,” “special selection” and so on, label distinctions that imply that a wine is better than its “regular” stablemate from the same winery but are seldom specific as to the details. Consumers need more information than merely the word “reserve” (or whatever variation) on a label to help in choosing a wine at a retail store or restaurant, especially since high-minded phrases like these frequently show up on cheap wines.

So today, I launch a series of posts that will compare regular bottlings of California wines with their “reserve” counterparts, starting with a pretty basic and well-known pair of wines, the Clos du Bois Merlot and Reserve Merlot, both from the excellent 2004 vintage. Winemaker for these wines was Erik Olsen.

The Clos du Bois Merlot for 2004 carries a North Coast designation. The sketchy information on the bottle’s back label doesn’t explain where the grapes come from, but the winery’s website tells us that 71 percent of the fruit derives from Sonoma County, with the rest coming from Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties. The blend of grapes on this wine is 90 percent merlot, 5 percent cabernet sauvignon and 5 percent “other,” which could imply cabernet franc, malbec and petit verdot or, you know, anything else. Clos du Bois produced 345,000 cases of this wine, or 4,140,000 bottles, which is why the wine is ubiquitous on wine lists in the country’s mid-level steak houses and bistro style restaurants, especially in wine-by-the-glass programs. (Yes, the label pictured here, taken from the winery’s website, indicates a Sonoma County designation, but it’s really North Coast.)

What’s it like? Solid, firm, well-knit, offering cherry-berry scents with touches of smoke and spice. (The wine ages 13 months in French, Eastern European and American oak, 20 percent new.) In the mouth, flavors of black currant and black cherry are permeated by polished oak and grainy tannins that bring in elements of briers, brambles and underbrush to dominate the finish. In other words: A nice wine, and I’ll rate it Very Good. On the other hand, I think a suggested retail price of $18 is a bit beyond the pale, and indeed you find the wine discounted to $14 or $15 all over the place. Drink now through 2008 or ’09.

The Clos du Bois Reserve Merlot 2004, Alexander Valley, announces its special nature first by its more artsy label, by (of course) the term “reserve,” used twice, and by the definite appellation, Alexander Valley, which lies within Sonoma County. The make-up of the wine is 91 percent merlot, 5 percent cabernet sauvignon and 4 percent malbec. It aged in wood longer than its North Coast cousin, 21 months opposed to 13 months, and in all French oak (half new), the most expensive barrels in the winemaking realm. Clos du Bois produced 13,500 cases of this reserve wine. These details don’t appear on the back label, which merely delivers a rather ecstatic description of the wine’s character.

And what is that character? The immediate impression is of a cool minerally bouquet that gradually unfolds ripe black currant and black cherry scents suffused by dried spice and potpourri. The wine’s texture is like dusty velvet infused with minerals; flavors of currants, cherries and plums offer hints of lead pencil, lavender, bitter chocolate and mocha, all of this enveloped in spicy oak and chewy, grainy tannins. Obviously, this “reserve” wine displays more dimension and detail than its stablemate, and in this sense, I think, justifies its heightened status. On the other hand, simply as a wine fashioned to exist at the reserve level, I see little justification for it, rating it Very Good+ and wishing I could bump it up to Excellent, but the real depth of character is not there. I can see ordering a glass of this wine in a restaurant to accompany a hanger steak and frites or pork loin or similar hearty fare, but it’s not a wine I would stock up on, even at the suggested price, which is $23. Best for consumption from now through 2010 or ’11.

Winemakers and producers in American, though they usually don’t want to admit this, have a much easier time as far as governmental regulations are concerned than their counterparts in Europe. Or maybe they do admit it, but sort of gruffly, in an American sort of way. In America, the rules set down by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), formerly the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms — and thank god they finally got the guns out of there! now the vice president can handle those directly! — primarily effect what terms can be printed on wine labels and what the terms mean.

In Europe, the story is far different. The regulations laid down by the official wine bureaus of various countries stipulate what kinds of grapes can be grown in what regions and what grapes go into different sorts of wines, often including the minimum percentages of grapes in blended wines. Some rules are so stringent that they dictate what the yields must be in the vineyards, what sort of trellising system must be used and when harvest must begin.

Whew, I’m glad we don’t have to worry about all that stuff in America! Our guiding power is the can-do spirit of frontier individualism which says, essentially, plant any grapes anywhere you want to and make the wine any way you can. The main point, as far as the TTB is concerned, is that fraud not be perpetuated by misleading label terms. So, if a label says that the wine is from Sonoma County, it “must be derived from not less than 75% of grapes, citrus or other fruit or other agricultural commodity grown in the named county AND must be fully finished (except for cellar treatment and blending which does not result in an alteration of class and type) in the state in which the named county is located.” I’m quoting here from the official Department of Treasury The Beverage Alcohol Manual: Basic Mandatory Labeling Information for Wine, a fascinating document written 75% in real English and available here.

If the label states that the wine is a product of an approved American Viticultural Area (AVA), such as Russian River Valley or Stags Leap District, then the amount of grapes in the wine from that AVA must be 85 percent. If the label states that the wine was “Estate Bottled,” then 100 percent of the grapes must derive from land owned or controlled by the winery, which much be located within the same AVA as the vineyard and “must crush, ferment the grapes, finish, age, process and bottle the wine on their premises.”

There are other various picayune label matters that producers must attend to, like the size of the type that the government warming is printed in, but it’s good that generally the federal government wants to prevent, as much as possible, the hoodwinking of innocent wine consumers.

Which brings me to the word “reserve,” a term that we see on wine labels all the time over which the TTB has no control at all and has never attempted to control and the whole reason for today’s post.

The word “reserve” on a label implies that the wine is special in some way, that it was, perhaps, produced from a better part of a vineyard, that the wine was selected from barrels whose contents demonstrated higher quality, that more care was taken with its making and that it is limited in production, therefore commanding a high price. There is also the implication that a winery produces a reserve bottling to augment its “regular” wine in the same genre.

Variations on the term “reserve” include Private Reserve, Proprietor’s Reserve, Vineyard Reserve and Vintner’s Reserve, Special Reserve and such terms as Special Selection, Special Release and Our Finest Selection. None of these terms is regulated, so that Glen Ellen, during “the fighting varietals” promotions in the 1980s, was free to label its wines as “Proprietors Reserve,” even though they were produced in the millions of cases and sold for $5 or $6. Then there’s Kendall-Jackson, whose well-known “Vintner’s Reserve” series, costing from about $12 to $16 a bottle, is ubiquitous in the country’s restaurants. Surely the situation is confusing for consumers when they can buy a bottle of Glen Ellen Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon for $5 while the Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon costs $116 and the Caymus Special Selection costs $136.

I think there need to be some rules, not necessarily the way it is in Tuscany, for example, where the differences between Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva and between Rosso di Montalcino and Brunello di Montalcino are enforced by government regulations. No, I think it is enough that a producer be required to prove that a wine labeled in some manner to indicate its superiority to a cousin wine from the same winery was indeed derived from a special vineyard or portion of a vineyard, that the grapes received particular treatment in the winery and that the wine was bottled in a limited quantity. These factors should be enumerated on the back label in straightforward language that consumers can understand. Wineries that did not follow these procedures or that could not justify using the terms would not be allowed to produce so-called “reserve” wines.

Next week: A similar rant on an equally nebulous and often misused term, “Old Vines.”