Is it just me or does life these days feel faster paced and more stressful than ever? The cadence in general seems to be accelerating and multitasking is the new norm. I suppose we can blame some of that on the pandemic lockdown, doom-scrolling and 7-second viral videos (thanks, TikTok). All of a sudden, AI instantly creates content that used to take us humans hours or days. Pile on the daily grind and normal life events that we all endure, and that additional tension in your neck and shoulders is easily explained.
Whatever it is that makes you feel as wound up as a yo-yo ready to be unleashed, there is always one activity that can help reduce those stress levels and bring you back to neutral: breathing. Sometimes we forget that just a few simple long, deep and drawn-out breaths can help us relax and get centered. Just as we all can benefit from a few minutes of box breathing or the deep 4-7-8 breathing technique (which refers to the seconds you take to inhale, hold and exhale—an exercise I highly recommend), our most treasured bottles of wine can benefit from that same deep breathing to unwind and unravel themselves into a more relaxed state.
You may have just read that last sentence and asked, “How can wine relax?” Think about this for a moment: Have you ever opened a really young, big and brash red wine? Say a Napa Cab, a Priorat, an Australian Shiraz or even a Côte Rôtie, for example? If you just pop the cork on these wines and pour yourself a sip, there’s a high likelihood of it being extremely overpowering with super concentrated fruit, high alcohol levels and maybe massive tannins that will have you sucking in your cheeks. These wines can come across as wound-up, or tight, and even one-dimensional in their first showing straight out of the bottle.
But allow these same wines to interact with oxygen, and you might imagine they breathe their own sigh of relief while swirling around in the decanter or glass. The densely concentrated fruit stretches its legs and exudes a variety of primary aromas and flavors hidden upon first sip. And those gripping, gritty tannins will simmer down and soften, just enough to let you know they are there without overpowering the palate. That alcohol level will still be elevated, but with the fruit and tannins now released and relaxed, the perceived balance of these structural components begins to find harmony on the palate, gaining complexity as the wine continues to unfurl. It’s almost like the wine went from being crunched in the fetal position in the bottle to fully sprawled on a velvet couch, exposing its inner beauty layer by layer. If you are not sold on how important breathing is for yourself, just try and go for a minute without it. This is why these deep, calming and focused breathing techniques help our bodies take in as much clean and healthy oxygen as possible while releasing all of that carbon dioxide, and negativity, on the out-breath.
This article originally appeared in the 2023 Best of Year issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today!
Classic examples of Old World and New World wine labels / Left photo: Meg Baggott; Right photo: Sara Littlejohn
Have you ever looked at a bottle of Chianti, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Taurasi or Alentejo and wondered exactly what’s inside? Or how about when you come across a Rhône-style red blend from California? Wine labels can offer up a lot of information about what’s inside—that is if you can decode the cryptic language on the label.
But fear not. There are some basic formulas that can help you understand the rather confusing and sometimes smug words on wine labels.
How to Read a Wine Label
The first thing to determine is if the wine is from the Old World (Europe, the Mediterranean, parts of Western Asia) or New World (any other wine-producing region). While all labels will include basic facts like region, producer, alcohol by volume (abv) and vintage (unless nonvintage), there are some notable distinctions.
Here are the differences between what you may find on labels from these two categories.
Photo by Meg Baggott
Old World Wine Labels
The vast majority of Old World wines will typically only indicate regions and aging classifications on the front label, but not grape varieties.
For example, red Riojas are produced typically from Tempranillo grapes, possibly with Graciano,Garnacha and perhaps Mazuelo. (And how could anyone not know that Mazuelo is the name for Carignan in Rioja). The problem is you’d be hard-pressed to find a Rioja that lists any of these grapes on the front label, if at all. The same goes for Chianti (made from Sangiovese), Burgundy (Pinot Noir for red wines and Chardonnay for white), Bordeaux and many others.
The main reason for these labeling practices is that these wines are more about a regional style than the grapes themselves. The same grape can show different characteristics based on climate, soil and terroir. So, while it may seem like producers are trying to confuse you by not naming the grapes on their bottles, it’s actually quite the opposite.
In recent years, some Old World producers have begun to name their wine’s grapes on the back labels, or even occasionally on the front. The caveat is that you’re expected to know what grapes can be (and are allowed to be) used in specific regions. That’s where a hint of Old World presumption can kick in.
Another characteristic of an Old World label is it may offer guidelines to aging. Unlike many New World wine labels, terms like “Reserva” (or “Riserva” in Italy) and “Gran Reserva” have real meaning based on the region they’re from.
However, each region’s regulations for age classifications can have almost identical names, but be very different. For example, if a bottle of red Rioja has Reserva on the label, that means it has been aged for a minimum of 36 months, with at least 12 months in oak.
However, a bottle of Chianti with Riserva on the label has spent at least 24 months in oak, with another three months in bottle. Additionally, a Brunello di Montalcino with Riserva on the label has spent five years aging after harvest, with at least two of those years spent in oak and six months in bottle. This is compared to the standard four total years (two in oak and four months in bottle) for non-Riserva Brunello.
Photo by Matthew Dimas
The most confusing wine labels of them all might be German, which contain a multitude of technical information and German-language terms like “Trockenbeerenauslese,” “Bernkasteler Badstube” and “Grosses Gewächs.” One glance and you may feel you need to be a Mensa member to ever understand these descriptions.
Here are a few tricks to help you decode German labels:
German Wine Quick Tips
German labels include ripeness levels.
For Prädikatswein, a designation that denotes superior quality wines, the levels range from the least ripe (Kabinett) to the ripest (Trockenbeerenauslese) and everything in between (Spätlese, Auslese and Beerenauslese). The ripeness levels can help indicate the sweetness level of the final wine. There may also be specific sweetness levels noted on German wine labels, which include Trocken (dry), Halbtrocken (half-dry/off-dry) and Eiswein (sweet dessert wine made from frozen grapes). You may also see Feinherb stated (another term to represent off-dry wines). And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
When you see two names together, particularly if the first name ends with an ‘er,’ it denotes a subregion and vineyard.
So, Bernkasteler Badstube means the wine is from the Badstube vineyard, located within the Bernkastel subregion.
German wines have their own version of Crus, like Bordeaux or Burgundy.
Grosses Gewächs on a label refers to a “great growth” and a wine of the highest quality, where Grosse Lage and Erstes Lage refer to grand cru and premier cru, respectively.
Photo by Sara Littlejohn
New World Wine Labels
With wines from the U.S., South America, Oceania and most other non-European countries, the grape variety almost always appears on the label.
Originally, New World wine labels focused less on where the grapes were grown because they were basically all unknown wine regions. Rather, they highlighted grapes to link the wines to iconic European regions. A Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot could be associated with Bordeaux, while a Chardonnay could be compared to Burgundy.
This also occurred because, unlike their Old World counterparts, the style of the wine focused more on the grape’s expression than the region, though this has certainly changed over time. Now, many non-European regions are home to some of the finest vineyards in the world.
New World wine labels tend to be fairly straightforward. More often than not, they provide the grapes, region, subregion and even a description of the wine’s aromas and flavors, usually on the back.
However, there are certainly exceptions to this rule. Take one of the most popular wines in the U.S. right now, The Prisoner. That name is literally all you’ll find on the front label, while the back label states simply that it’s a “red wine” from Napa Valley. These wines, like some Old World counterparts, count on the prestige of their name communicating all a wine connoisseur needs to know.
Certain New World wines may also be deemed a Rhône-style red blend or a super Tuscan-style wine. Again, you have to know the grapes used in the historic European regions to understand what’s in the bottle. Typically, Rhône-style red blends from California are a combination of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre other grapes permitted in France’s Rhône Valley.
Keep in mind that with New World labels, terms like “Reserve,” “Special” and “Selection” don’t have any regulatory minimums in terms of aging or vineyard location. They are basically marketing terms meant to imply a higher-quality bottling, but they can be slapped on any label and offer no guarantee.
The only term that really has legal meaning in the U.S. is “Meritage,” the combination of “merit” and “heritage.” A number of California winemakers banded together in the late 1980s to form the Meritage Association (now Meritage Alliance) and created this classification for Bordeaux-style blends produced by member wineries, intended as a designation of quality. These wines must be a blend of two or more of the red Bordeaux varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Merlot, Petit Verdot and the rarer St. Macaire, Gros Verdot and Carmenère. They can’t have more than 90% of any single variety. For white Meritage, the blend must include at least two of the three Bordeaux white grapes: Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon and Muscadelle.
There’s a lot to learn from wine labels—so long as you know where to look. Keep these tricks in mind and you’ll be headed in the right direction.
Recently, I had the pleasure of sampling a current vintage 100-point super Tuscan with a group of colleagues to celebrate a special occasion. While this iconic wine was extremely complex, focused and intense, it wasn’t really “drinking well.” Granted, it needed time to open up and perhaps a side of beef to pair with, but the consensus was that it wasn’t the earth-shattering experience the group had anticipated.
The following Sunday, I dug deep in my cellar to find a 1989 Clos des Jacobins Saint-Émilion Grand Cru that received a 90-point score in 1999. It had been stored properly for the last two decades, so I figured this was a perfect time to open it up.
I seemed to have caught it in its peak stage when it wasn’t just drinking well, it was drinking perfectly.
It was slightly muted at first, but when it came to life, it displayed intense dried red fruit, fig, raisin, smoked chestnuts, tobacco leaf and forest floor on the nose and palate. The acidity was still kicking, and the tannins were supple and polished. Luckily enough, my pops and I seemed to have caught it in its peak stage when it wasn’t just drinking well, it was drinking perfectly.
As I sipped, I reminisced about that vintage of 1989, my sophomore year in high school. Visions of shredding away on my Gibson Les Paul came to mind, as well as the early stages of my high school golf career, summers working at camp and figuring out how to attract the opposite sex without making a complete fool of myself. My pops and I agreed that spending a quiet afternoon over a perfectly aged bottle of Bordeaux was exactly what we needed.
It wasn’t that the Saint-Émilion Grand Cru was necessarily a better wine than the young super Tuscan. In that moment, however, it was drinking better in its life cycle. But also, with its sophistication and wisdom, it opened a gateway for a little nostalgia and a walk down memory lane as only a perfectly aged bottle of wine can do.
Marshall Tilden III, DWS, CSW 