Wine vocabulary for too-similar terms
red or white Bordeauxstyle wines that are not actually from the Bordeaux region of France. Pinotage, which starts with “PEEno” and ends with “tahj,” as in Taj Mahal, is a South African grape variety that was made by crossing pinot noir and cinsaut. crosses the border and enters Portugal, it is called the Douro. In Portugal, the same river lends its name to the Douro Valley, which provides us not only with world-famous, fortified port wines, but also with table wines carrying the “Douro” region name. is the crisp, zippy (mostly) white wine from the Basque region of Spain, while Tokaji is the legendary, nectar-like dessert wine from Hungary.
The words have essentially a one-letter difference, and they are both wine regions, but physically they are a world apart. Edna Valley is in California’s Central Coast, south of the city of San Luis Obispo. Eden Valley is in South Australia, north of the city of Adelaide. the Marche and Abruzzo regions. The other pecorino is — just as you suspected — sheep’s milk cheese from Italy. It’s been said before (last week, right here), but I think it can be said again: Mmm, cheese.
Verdicchio is another white grape variety from Italy’s Marche region, primarily, while verdejo is a white grape variety used in the wines of Spain’s Rueda region.
Rueda, in northwestern Spain, is one of the country’s top white wine regions, relying (as noted above) on the verdejo grape variety. Roero, in northwestern Italy, is home to nebbiolo-based red wines and arneis-based white wines. Rioja is the worldfamous region in northern Spain that turns out sought-after tempranillobased reds.
Both of these words have appeared on the labels of white wines of questionable quality through the decades. “Chablis” was a popular, generic term for sweet-tinged jug wine from California, but real Chablis has always been crisp, flinty chardonnay from the Chablis region of France — and nowhere else. Soave, made mostly of the garganega grape variety, hails from the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. While its reputation has suffered, good versions of Soave are not too hard to find these days.
They don’t look or sound alike yet — but hold on. Grauburgunder is the German name for pinot gris. Pinot noir is known in Germany as spatburgunder, and in Austria as blauburgunder. Blaufrankisch is the Austrian name for the red grape variety called lemberger in Germany. And as long as the spelling and pronunciation are so close, it’s probably also worth mentioning the notoriously stinky cheese known as limburger. Smell it once and you’ll never confuse it with anything even close to wine again.
Of course there are dozens more similar-looking and/or -sounding words in the wine world. Once you know them, really know them, they’ll be as clear to you as if you had a sister named Mary and a brother named Maury — or as clear as the difference between an enologist (one who studies wine and winemaking) and an enophile (a connoisseur of wine). Hey, that’s you.