in wine today

What’s in a name?

Imagine you are a bottle of wine, sitting on a crowded supermarket shelf. How do you reach out and say: I’m-The-One, Try-Me, or better still, Buy-Me?

Some wine aficionados never find enough information on back and front labels of course, but it’s usually the eyes that have it first.

A bottle of wine is expected to look presentable, at a party as smart as the invites sharing its contents.

And how often do guests turn up in a T-shirt stating their biological make-up, the way they were conceived, the location they were born, and how hot it was at that time?

Most consumers are as interested in the precise characteristics of the grapes, malolactic fermentation or the toasting of oak staves, as they are in the DNA of friends or their own biological make-up.

If you are a bottle of wine jostling for attention, you’d better wear a most attractive label and go by a (brand) name that sticks – especially if you aspire to be chosen again and again, or if you wish patrons to pick you off a seemingly endless restaurant’s wine list next time round.

Recently, award-winning winemaker E. Delicata went the extra mile and tastefully revamped the labels of the popular Classic Collection vintage 2000.

More than indicating the different grape varieties as an after-thought, each single grape varietal wine made from Italian grapes (either Chardonnay, Trebbiano, Pinot Bianco, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon) has now been named individually after a respective Italian composer of classical music.

Labelling a wine merely by the grape variety it’s made of, such as ‘Chardonnay’, was in itself already a useful rough-and-ready guide to the taste of the wine.

But still, two wines made from the same grape variety might taste very different, depending on the sourcing of the grapes and the winemaking skills of the winemaker – which is fine when you don't mind something new within your familiar range of choice. But adding a name like ‘Donato’ to the grape variety on the label, however, prevents wine lovers and sommeliers erring when this particular wine is wanted.

A chardonnay lover’s explicit request for a ‘Donato’ encore at the dinner table, for example, is crystal clear lingua franca and guarantees the keen consumer the consistency, reliability and quality he or she has come to expect.