The Name Game

Ampelography--the study that identifies grape varieties by the structure of the leaves, the shape of the grape clusters and other physical evidence--is an obscure science. There are not many ampelographers anywhere, and as a result much misinformation in the world’s wine regions gets handed down from father to son.

Certainly a lot of unintentional misidentification of grapes still goes on in the United States. John Parducci tells the story of the great Pinot Noirs he used to make from a block of grapes growing on his ranch in Mendocino County. “I won a gold medal at the state fair one year for that Pinot Noir,” he says.

“Then one day Austin Goheen (then an ampelographer at UC Davis) came out to see me. We walked over to the Pinot Noir vineyard, and he said, ‘This isn’t Pinot Noir. It’s Charbono.’ What did I know?”

In France, the true identity of grape varieties isn’t as big a deal, because growers usually raise the traditional grapes of their village--only in Alsace are wines generally given varietal names. It’s the regional character that consumers know, not the grape character. If a wine comes from the commune of Musigny, Goheen says, that’s generally enough information for the consumer.

Here, where the name of the grape variety winds up being the name of the wine, precise identification of varieties should be better than it is, he says. For example, what we call Pinot Blanc in the United States is probably Melon, a lesser French variety. Technically, there is no Petite Sirah variety; what’s growing here under that name is actually the modest French variety called Duriff. Some grapes classified as Gamay Beaujolais are really different selections of Pinot Noir. Some designations for Riesling are permitted that have no true Riesling in the wine.

Goheen says: “I admit that we don’t all agree on these things. We thought we were right about a lot of varieties some years ago, and later it turned out we weren’t right.”

Yet at UC Davis, changes are rarely made in the standard names. One grape grower familiar with the inconsistencies says: “Davis has a way over the years of grandfathering things in, even if they are wrong and the (professors) know they’re wrong.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which regulates what goes on wine labels, has itself been lax about grape terminology. Nearly a decade ago the agency began looking into revising the names of certain varietal wines to make the accepted list more accurate. An advisory committee submitted recommendations, but little has happened since.

Moreover, BATF has a small and overworked label approval staff, and few of them know much about wine or its naming nuances. They are given no formal training in such matters and go pretty much by rule books that are occasionally confusing.

Some labels that are simple oversights receive approval by BATF specialists, such as a 1987 J. Lohr Seven Oaks red wine from Paso Robles. The label identifies the wine only as “Cabernet” but does not say whether the wine is Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc. To its credit, however, BATF approved the term Valdiguie as a synonym for Napa Gamay without question, as was right.