A third Frenchman, from the Champagne country, settled in upstate New York. He set out to make wine, using the only grapes available, and he made it precisely as he had seen it made in Reims and Epernay. What wonder, since it sparkled, that he called it champagne?
As might be expected, since there were no legal controls, this business soon began to run wild. People began to make “Burgundy” out of table grapes, all sorts of concoctions became “Chateau Yquem,” and even the manufacturers of carbonated cider began to feel that they had some sort of vested right in the name “champagne.” It is perhaps important to remember that when all this was taking place, even the copyright laws had not been established on any international basis, and the works of every well-known English author were being pirated and reprinted in this country with no mention of royalties.
Needless to say, this same story was repeated in ten or a dozen countries during the nineteenth century. Italian Marsala was sold as sherry, Spanish Tarragona produced port, Chile had its “Rhine wine,” Australia shipped “Burgundy” to England and undersold the peasant producers of the Cote d'Or, and South African “hock” had its day of favor about the time of the Boer War.
Eventually it became obvious that this sort of thing could not continue indefinitely, although as much “Chablis” is certainly still made in Spain as in Chablis itself, and more “sauterne” even today in California than in France. But some effort, at least, has been made to bring a modicum of order into what was rapidly degenerating into absolute chaos.
In the United States, at least, some twenty or thirty wine names have been declared “semigeneric,” and although European in origin, can be used on American wines providing the word “American” or “California” or “New York State” or “Ohio” appears prominently in direct conjunction. Unfortunately, although the use of most such names is strictly regulated and controlled in their country of origin, they can be used here pretty indiscriminately, as I expect to demonstrate in the following paragraphs.
About the same time, another change took place and this, too, produced a series of complications. The brand—as distinguished from the purely geographical name of origin—had achieved considerable importance in champagne by about 1800, and people had begun to ask for Mr. A's or Mr. B's champagne rather than, as formerly, for a champagne from Ay or from Cramant or from Verzenay. This had, in point of fact, both some technical and some commercial justification—the manufacture of sparkling wine required in general more capital and more specialized knowledge than the average peasant producer could hope to possess.
But the brand, before long, began to invade the field of still wine as well, and by 1920 we were being asked to believe that “XYZ's St. Julien” was superior to Chateau Leoville-Poyferre (the best vineyard in the township of St. Julien), that “SOS Bourgogne Monopole” was the equal of authentic Chambertin, and that “Wunderbar's Moselblumchen” could stand comparison with a Piesporter Lay Auslese of a great year. When prohibition was repealed in this country, we were deluged with the same sort of misinformation, told that “Old Crypt Brand Chablis,” although made out of raisin grapes in Fresno, was “America's best wine,” that “Hollow Tree Burgundy,” shipped in tank car and bottled in Norfolk or Fall River, was “a noble, noble wine, equal to the best imported,” and so on. We still get a lot of this, but more and more consumers are becoming gun-shy.
Brands have their honorable and unquestioned place in the merchandising of wine. They help a wine drinker to associate, as he should, the various products of an honest grower or merchant; they simplify the whole question for the uninitiated; only, perhaps, through the use of a brand can a small producer arrive at the volume which permits intelligent improvement and sound expansion.
The enduring brands, in the field of wine, will be those used to supplement, never to replace, the geographical designations and the names of grape varieties which alone, in the last analysis, inform the consumer. Thus Louis Latour Corton Charlemagne, BV Napa Cabernet, Charles Fournier New York State Champagne, Clos St. Odile Alsatian Riesling, Almaden Grenache Rose, Chapoutier Cote Rotie, Kesselstatt Josefshofer are, without reference to the excellence of the wines, brands that are informative and that should survive. The relevant facts concerning each wine may be on a back label or a front label, in large print or small, so long as they are there.
You will find no facts, relevant or otherwise, except the bare minimum required by law, on “John Doe Director's Special Claret, Made from the Finest Grapes,” or on “Ballyhoo Brand California Sherry, with That Special Flavor.”
And however long and difficult the road, America's consumers are making some real progress along it. Good wine, unlike good money, drives out bad.
The average American consumer, who drinks wine occasionally but not regularly, could, I suppose, if necessary, on a quiz program, with a new car or even a washing machine at stake, name and define with some degree of accuracy about thirty or forty wines. This estimate is perhaps on the high side, but Messrs. Gallup and Roper, to my knowledge, have so far not occupied themselves with vintages, so perhaps we can let it pass. However I propose to put down here, in alphabetical order, the names of forty wines. Inevitably there will be plenty of omissions in such a list, and for obvious reasons there are no brands or trade names included. I am listing, I think, the name of almost every wine you are likely to find in the average package store—I do not say wine merchant's establishment—by and large in this country. This is not, by any means, a list of the Forty Immortals, nor a roster of the House of Peers. It is just what most of us, these days, have to choose from, and what I am giving in the way of a definition of each should be helpful, even if it is a long way from complete.
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