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Bordeaux to cut number of chateaux names
January 30, 2008
By Jane Anson in Bordeaux
In an attempt to simplify Bordeaux wines for the consumer, estates are being told to stop using several different chateau names for the same wine, bottled at the same property.
The usual practice today – officially disallowed by a 1921 decree that is widely ignored – is to use a different name for each different sales channel, namely supermarkets, restaurants, and even countries. Although there are around 7,000 winemakers in the region, there are over 12,000 chateaux names.
The Bordeaux wine union, the Federation des Syndicats des Grands Vins de Bordeaux (FGVB), has been given until 31 January 2008 for properties to decide which of their current names they wish to keep. They have been allowed a maximum of two. The eventual aim is to bring the number of names down to under 10,000.
'A chateau may use only one name,' a spokesperson at the FGVB told decanter.com. 'With the possibility of a second if it can be proved it was in use before 1983. Two properties may also be vinified in the same cellars, as long as the vinifications are carried out completely separately.'
The 1921 decree states that only one chateau name per property may be used. Over the years, however, the rule was less and less strictly applied. In 1993, a new decree was issued restating the rule, but it wasn't until the crisis of 2001/2002 that its application became a priority.
The decision will affect chateaux across the region, including Chateau Falfas in Cotes de Bourg, that currently bottles under three different names. Lurton properties such as Chateau Quantin and Chateau Coucheroy will also be affected.
'We want consumers to feel that when they buy a chateau from Bordeaux, they can have confidence in where it comes from,' said Thomas Jullien, marketing manager of the Bordeaux wine trade body, the CIVB.
Have your say...
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 hurray..finally the French are waking up. The biggest problems with selling French wines are two. the first is the pronunciation of the name..many dare not make pronunciation mistakes especially at restaurants and so go for simple names and labels they feel confident with to pronounce, secondly the huge confusion with all the appellation and different names...
I think this is a very positive move forward for French wines.. the consumer wants it simple!!!
Victor Bonello
Cutting the number of Chateau names from 12,000 to 10,000 is not going to change anything. The point of having more than one Chateau name is mainly down to a marketing technique, enabling many importers working on the same patch to enjoy selling the wine/label that is exclusive to them for their particular area. It is not done as a means of deceit. This decision will only make the sales of Bordeaux harder than at present. The fact that it has been ignored since 1921 says it all, it has been ignored for a good reason. Many consumers who buy one of the 10,000 Chateau will still not know exaclty where the wine comes from, and most of them do not care as long as the wine suits their palate and their pocket.
Leigh Claridge, Maison Sichel, UK Office
The change of the use of different names to customers is very good news especially where the wine is produced at the same time as the main Chateau. The French wine makers are hopefully going to simplify their labelling as well as they have been overtaken by the New World in this respect. My comments are made as a serious private buyer who takes the trouble to visit the Bordeaux area at least twice a year to buy wine for personal consumption.
I regard the minor growers in the Medoc, St-Emilion, Fronsac and Entre des Mers areas as much better value than the major chateaux.
Michael J Day
I have to echo Leigh Claridge that, whilst the move may be indicative of a 'good intention' – to simplify matters for the consumer – we still will have customers in restaurants coping with challenging diversity, despite the fact that we all know wine diversity (style, composition, origin) to be a good thing.
This is not the way to simplify matters for consumers at all, sadly, but varietal labeling in Bordeaux would go a long way to help in that regard. Less well known Château and brands are transient in the minds of consumers, they come and go without recognition. Countries, the more famous regions and, as Australia and California have done most to prove, grape names are all far more recognisable than a minor reduction in Châteaux names. We want consumers to be confident that they can choose Bordeaux by its dominant grapes as well as by its price.
James MacLellan, London, UK
The best decision that Bordeaux has made since 1855! But they need to go much, much farther. Not only to stop the same producer using a number of different names but attack, wholesale, the total number. Below Cru Borgeois most of these chateaux names are completely anonymous, not only to the occasional wine drinker but to most of the regular wine drinking population. Just walk around any French supermarket and watch the French themselves looking in total bewilderment at the dozens of largely meaningless names.
One can understand an individual producer having an emotional attachment to his 'chateau' name but just recognise the reality of even 7000 different names for what is, to all intents and purposes, the same product! Even the term 'chateau' is, in itself, debased by this excess, knowing full well that many of them are 'chateaux' in the mind of the farmer/vigneron only. Perhaps Bordeaux may even come to the conclusion that the producer's name may yet be a more valuable 'brand' than that of some minor country house.
What a pity Gilbert & Sullivan were not French otherwise the Bordelais may have earlier recognised the danger of the proliferation of the term 'chateau':
"When everybody's somebody, nobody's anybody!"
Philip Styles, St.Gaudent, France
Sorry, but I must take issue with Victor Bonello. Must we continue to go down this road of dumbing down everything, so that the poor old English speaking world can have all the wines named after a creek or a mountain range or something with one or two syllables which sounds English and is easy to read? Let's call all red wine that comes from Bordeaux
"French Red wine from Bordeaux made from Cabernet Sauvignon and/or Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit (sorry, small) Verdot"!
Bordeaux is complicated, wine is complicated, but Bordeaux has a diversity of styles and flavours and price points unrivalled in the Wine World, and indeed Australia has been moving towards regional definition for some time now. On the varietal labelling front, many Chateaux/ non-Chateaux are now putting the varietal mix on the back label, and many generic wines have them on the front label. A Shiraz/Syrah from France does not taste like a Shiraz/Syrah from the Rhone. A varietal blend from the Medoc, if typical of its appellation, will not taste like a varietal blend from the Graves, if typical of its appellation, even though the varietal mix may be exactly the same, so what will the consume think about that? At the lower end, sure, we all need Bordeaux brands to do their job, but at the middle/upper end, let's have terroir, Appellation, vinification, viticultural, winemaking and Chateau differences.
People interested in Wine, Food, Language and Culture will strive to explore, and sure, along the way, may well be confused, but give me a choice any day.
Leigh Claridge, Maison Sichel UK
The Customer does not care and will not notice. This is a pointless bureaucratic exercise that will not help to sell Bordeaux wines at all as it will not make the wines any better. When will the Bordelais stop re-arranging the deck chairs and take steps to enable producers to make wines that modern consumers want.
Michael Daymond-King, Hatton Estate & Turtle Bay wines, New Zealand
Bored-eaux, who cares… Pedantry is a waste of time unless you are an aeronautic engineer.
Toby Bensimon, Adelaide, Australia
I think Mr Daymond-King must be living in the dark ages. I totally agree with his first sentence, and totally disagree with the second. What utter rubbish. As I mentioned in my previous e-mail, Bordeaux produces a huge diversity of wines and styles, some very modern, but not all, and Bordeaux is happy with that. We have learnt a hell of lot from Australian and New Zealand winemakers, and we continue to learn, and vice versa. Comments like yours are totally incorrect.
Leigh Claridge, Maison Sichel UK
To meander off-topic: If you think multiple, sometimes sound-alike Bordeaux chateau names are confusing, consider the pizza universe that feeds on-the-run Manhattan.
Over the years, I have encountered Ray's Pizza, Ray's Pizza and Bagel Cafe, Ray Bari Pizza, Ray Bono Pizza, Original Ray's Pizza, Famous Original Ray's Pizza, Famous Ray's Pizza of Greenwich Village and World Famous Ray's Pizza.
As a counterman at World Famous Ray's Pizza once told a New York Times reporter: 'There's more Rays selling pizza than there are Docs playing cards.'
These Rays are really Second and Third Growths. The First Growth is John's of Bleecker Street (founded 1929), in Greenwich Village. You get thin-crusted pizzas from coal-fired brick ovens. But heed the warning sign: 'No slices.' You must buy a whole pie.
I myself do not match cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot and petit verdot with pizza. I prefer a cold white called Heineken's. (Please keep this confession to yourself. I wouldn't want others to know.)
Howard G Goldberg, New York City
All that have been said here prooves that we have to amongst other things strenghten the system of Appellation, concentrate on ensuring the quality and typicity of wines claiming an appellation and further more comunicate the values (historical, geographical, terroir, varietal, style etc) of the various French wine regions more effectively.
Of course at the top level in Bordeaux there is no confusion problems. Angelus, Pichon, Petrus, Lynch Bages etc have become recognised brands on their own right although I think it is important for them to respect the fact that they owe their recognition primarily to their geographical, historical and cultural heritage. No one would have heard of Pichon if it was in Palermo instead of Pauillac!
Regarding varietal labelling, I do not think that this is the best way forward for the French. Of course I see no harm in giving this type of information on back labels but I am convinced that no one buys a Chateuneuf du Pape because its Grenache based! It would equally not make sense for CNP producers to promote the idea that their wines taste the way they do only because of Grenache. (13 varietes, galletts, Fudre, bla, bla, bla).
Wine consumers who drink varietal labelled wines might also like to know that some new world wines, although labelled with one variety may or may not include other varieties in the bottled blend. Their are some regulations about this but if I am not mistaken the unmentioned variety could represent up to 15%.
Of course if I had a Sicilian vineyard with Nero d'Avola, I would have very different views. A couple of years ago the Sicilians staged the best marketing coup I have heard in a long time when they succeeded to protect the name of Nero d'Avola solely for wines made from this variety in Sicily.
I also refer to an earlier contributor who lives in France who seems not to understand the meaning of 'Chateau'. In French wine jurgon 'Chateau' does not mean a Castle! It simply refers to a vineyard with a cellar.
Which brings me back to where I started. We simply need to comunicate the language and spirit of French wines better.
Michael Tabone, Malta
With regard to Chateau Quantin and Chateau Coucheroy: under the current rules these names are legal. You are permitted two chateau names per cellar if the second was in use before 1983, which is the case for these two wines, the second wines of Rochemorin and Cruzeau respectively. These brands conform to current rules and are therefore not at risk.
James Ryland, Sales Director, Andre Lurton
The law should state that a winemaker must have an actual 'Chateau' on site and for only that chateau name to be applied to the wine made therein. This would eliminate a lot of confusion between properties. Burgundy has a system to where most estates are bottled with the producer's name or domaine and the vineyard typically designated. The term 'clos' is used in many instances to signify a walled in vineyard. The new law is a step in the right direction, but more drastic measures need to be taken to ensure marketing honesty. Christopher Barrett
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