Appellations of origin for wine

why that's a little bit of a touchy subject, where it can legally be made, the grapes, how to read the label, what it tastes like, what's the difference between champagne and prosecco, and a little bit of drama about producers, the appellation.

And yeah, I'll even tell you about 24 hours I once spent in a very small town in Cava country.

welcome to spain explained i'm marty buckley author journalist and cook who has lived in spain since 2010. thanks for listening so cava let's define it like we usually do start off with what even is cava cava is a sparkling wine i really hope that you guys know at least that first fact of the podcast because it's so tasty and if you don't know that means you haven't tried it and you really need to try it It's a sparkling wine with a denomination de origen, a D.O., Spain's protected designation system, the same as the Appellation in French, the AOC, and, you know, the same kind of legal frame that protects Rioja.

For example, what makes Cava Dio unusual, and this is something that we'll talk about the rest of the episode, is that it protects a way or a method, a way of making wine more than the place.

Nearly every other Dio in Spain is drawn on the map.

The subzone system that I'm just detailed was approved in 2020.

And it's important to know, like, I don't want to bog you guys down with too much info at first, but it's important to know because for decades, the label on the cava didn't tell you anything about where the actual grapes were from.

A bottle from a family estate with a ton of history in the Penedes in Cataluña and a bottle from a co-op in Extremadura both said cava and nothing else.

Yet, this is where we start seeing Alsace branch off from traditional, sweeter German styles, despite using many of the same grapes.

On November 2nd, 1945, the Vans d'Alsace Appellation was formally defined, and this would be rolled into its Appellation designation two decades later.

Alsace would be the last major region in France to attain its AOC for its wines in 1962.

AOC varietal wines were defined by decree on the last day of June in 1971, and since then, Alsace Grand Cru was added in 1975, and Cremant d'Alsace, the bubbly, was added in 1976.

So now I will translate every letter, every word to make sense.

So the letter A means appellation.

Appellation means the name.

So in my example, the name is champagne.

The O means the origin of the product.

And the speculation, if you are just only one vintage and few chateaux, to have speculation, it was not a problem.

Today, each Appellation have three, four, five top wines, and every three years, we have a top vintage.

It's a lot of wine on the market, a lot of wine.

And it was not like that by the bust.