Picking wine itself can be quite confusing if you maybe are not familiar with regions and labels and if this is not confusing enough, even more confusing or overwhelming can be the choosing of a French wine. Ahh… the French. No-one said it should be easy!
Simplicity!
Did you know the capsules on French wines, which are called CRD (Capsule Représentative de Droit) actually can give you a lot of information about the bottle and wine?
A simple guideline to impress your friends while shopping for French wine? Then let me explain… and let’s take a look at this image of a capsule on the bottle of a French wine:
The information we can get from this:
Marianne
The image you see in this example picture, is the image of Marianne, who is of course the symbol of the French Republic. Around Marianne, the information on the capacity of the bottle is found, a reference to the French Republic and ‘D.G.D.D.I.’
D.G.D.D.I.
What is also visible is the D.G.D.D.I. acronym. This states that the consumption duties on alcohol have been paid to the Directorate General of Customs and Excise.
That’s nice to know, isn’t it?
Color of the capsule
The color also has a meaning, and makes it possible to distinguish the level of appellation of a wine. This green colored capsule indicates this is a still or sparkling wine, and meeting the definition of quality wines produced in specified regions (quality wines), which include, in particular, controlled designations of origin (AOC) and high-quality delimited wines (VDQS).
There are also blue (other wines including drinks that are taxed as wine) (Country Wine and Table Wines) and red (to replace green and blue capsules for wine but excludes sparkling wines with a registered designation of origin ‘Champagne’ etc.) capsules. More colors exist and there are used for other spirits.
Département
As you can see in this capsule, there is a reference “68 N 30” on the crown. This als gives you several information. The first two-digits, ’68’ refers to the headquarters department of the bottler and this is often, but not always, the production department. In this case 68 stands for Haut-Rhin.
Haut-Rhin is named after the Rhine river and one of the original 83 departments, created during the French Revolution, in respect of the southern half of the province of Alsace. After being annexed several times, in 1944, it was recovered by France.
The letter refers to the qualification of the bottler and there are three different letters:
• R for ‘Récoltant’ (=Harvester/farmer. Indicates winemaker is not just grower of grapes, but also harvests or picks their own grapes)
• N for Non-récoltant or Négociant (=Non-harvester or trader; the vineyard does not belong to the person who bottled or made this wine)
• E for Entrepositaire agréé (= the wine is marketed and commercialized by someone who has little connection with the grape-growing process at the vineyard, and has often bought the grapes in bulk)
Choose your wine carefully, and if you are still trying to impress your friends?
Then follow this simple guideline, as you are more likely to find a nice French wine :
– pick a bottle with a green capsule
– marked with the letter ‘R’ or ‘Récoltant’ in full
As France is one of the biggest wine producing countries in the world, personally I never have had any difficulty in finding a good wine. And neither should you.
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