Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [51]
Italy’s law is called Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC), which means “controlled denomination of origin,” the same concept as France’s AOC. There is also a higher level for a few of Italy’s top regions, called Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG). The Garantita adds a “guarantee” of more rigorous authenticity and quality controls.
Spain’s law is called Denominacion de Origen (DO), or “denomination of origin.” Like Italy, they also added a higher rank to this law, Denominacion de Origen Calificada (DOC). Calificada means “qualified,” again implying stricter quality controls. At present, only Rioja has full DOC status. The Priorat region has been elevated to DOC, but as this book goes to print is still in the process of being added to the official Spanish DOC registry.
Germany’s top-quality rank is identified as Qualitatswein mit Pradikat (QmP), which translates as “quality wine with distinction.” Typically, though, Germany’s wines at this quality rank, which often are Rieslings, also list the grape name on the label.
It is standard practice in the wine trade to refer to these by their abbreviations, such as AOC for France and DOC for Italy, so don’t get bogged down by the pronunciations.
An extreme example will illustrate the point of all of these rules and regulations. Suppose you paid thirty dollars for a bottle using the “champagne” name, only to find that the wine inside was not the elegant, bubbly, and complex treat you expected, but rather some cheap jug wine. Your trust in the “Champagne” name would be utterly compromised. You can understand why the Europeans object to some New World countries’ use of names like chablis and burgundy on our jug and bag-in-box wines.
If all the rules and legalese strike you as tradition run amok, well, there are some in the wine trade who would agree, saying these strictures inhibit innovation and freedom of expression in the Old World. Others point to the quality and style diversity of the great wines—French Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne; Italian Chianti and Barolo; Spanish Rioja; and so on—and conclude that these traditions are indeed worthy. You have to keep in mind the Old World point of view. It focuses on letting the vineyard, not the winemaker, express itself to the max. The freedom of expression is left up to Mother Nature.
Terroir
There is a word for the notion of the supremacy of the vineyard—or rather, the French have a word for it. It is called terroir (tear-WAHR), and it is the idea that the smell and taste of a wine can and should actually reflect the character of its particular vineyard. It is also the idea that gets wine lovers talking about the merits of Château X versus Château Y, or how the wine from this vineyard in the north of the Chablis region is more elegant than the one from the vineyard planted farther south.
But you don’t have to probe that level of detail to appreciate the notion that different growing conditions give different characteristics to wine, in the same way that any living thing is a reflection of its environment. Artisanal cheesemakers will tell you that the taste of their cheese changes as the diet of their cows (or goats or sheep) changes from spring to summer grasses, then to winter feed. The flavor of Pacific northwest salmon and Alaskan salmon is different in part because of the different habitats and diets of the fish. When it comes to wine, the Old World view is that “wine is made in the vineyard,” so the vintner’s job is simply to shepherd into the bottle the character of the vineyard—nuances, subtleties, and all. That gets to the heart of the Old World subtlety of style that we’ve been talking about. You’ll be able to explore some of these nuances with the tastings in Chapters 6 and 7.
It also makes for an obvious contrast with the New World riff, which is often about making a splashy statement. This grew out of the fact that there was little in the way of tradition to dictate