CLARET
Here is another perennial favorite and international champion—well known almost everywhere expcept where it originally and properly comes from, the Bordeaux district of France. In England, the word is practically synonymous with red Bordeaux, although I have never seen a bottle of red Bordeaux with “Claret” on its label. In France, the term is semiarchaic and almost meaningless. In Spain and Spanish-speaking countries, a clarete is a red table wine, light in body, and rather pale in color. Here in America, claret is a catchall term, used on a few good wines and many poor ones: it can legally be made anywhere, out of any grapes, it has to be red, and under 14 per cent alcohol by volume. Do not, I suggest, condemn a wine untasted because it is called claret; if you want the best, see under Cabernet.
CONCORD
A popular Eastern table grape, acceptable as such, but wholly unsuited to wine-making. At the risk of wounding sensibilities, I may add that Concord claret and Concord port are, in my wholly personal opinion, two of the worst wines now made within the terricorial limits of the United States of America.
DELAWARE
Perhaps the only grape, of the many hundred varieties grown in Europe and the United States, which is excellent when it is served and eaten as fruit. and equally distinguished as wine. A pink grape, grown exclusively in the East, it yields white wine. Generally used in the making of New York and Ohio champagne, but a still wine worth investigating.
GRAVES
One of the main divisions of the Bordeaux district of France. South and southwest of Bordeaux, it actually produces more red wine than white, but is above all famous for the latter. The vines are Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc (see under these), the vineyards are gently rolling or level, the soil is gravel (whence the word Graves), the wine is never bone-dry, never really sweet, usually contains a certain amount of sulphur (hardly detectable, except by an expert), is one of the world's most popular all-around table wines. The red Graves, of which Chateau Haut-Brion is by all odds the most famous, are largely made from the Cabernet grape. Graves, so far, is purely a French name. The nearest American equivalents are the Semillons, Sauvignon Blancs, and “dry sauternes” from the northern California counties.
LIEBFRAUMILCH
In German, this word means “milk of the Blessed Virgin.” The name; originally given to wine made from a few grapes grown around the Liebfrauenkirche of Worms, on the Rhine (the Liebfrauen Stiftswein, and by no means a superior vineyard) has become the lowest common denominator of cheap German Rhine wine. Legally meaningless, widely misused, the name is one that real wine lovers generally pass over without comment on their way down a wine list. Some shippers may and occasionally do ship under the name Liebfraumilch wines that are entitled to a far more precise and honorable name. So far, this appellation is purely German. I hope it stays so.
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