A wine, by any other name, can sell better

Wines survive on their names.

In a late-'70s moment that has become Napa legend, Robert Mondavi put his sauvignon blanc through oak barrels, changed it to the more easily parsed fumé blanc, and created a sensation.

Winemakers have again been rethinking varietal names. If Mondavi pioneered what the government calls the "fanciful" varietal — not, as it might sound, a dandied-up wine but a new, made-up moniker for an existing grape — some U.S. wines have recently adopted new but very real names, taking a cue from overseas.

A good deal of syrah, that well-loved Rhone grape, has been refashioned as shiraz.  American pinot gris, once a rarity outside the West Coast, has been gaining traction nationwide as pinot grigio. One grape, two names.

While syrah has long been grown here in small amounts, Australians planted shiraz in vast quantities. Their success in selling fruity, affordable shiraz to Americans in the past 20 years has been such that the Aussie Wonder is now the second-most popular imported varietal, according to data from the Impact Databank 2004 wine study.

Eager to share in that good fortune, U.S. wineries have not simply rebranded syrah as shiraz; they tinkered with their taste profiles to produce punchy, lively, rather Down Under wines emblematic of the so-called New World style.

Charles Shaw's two-buck shiraz recently created a dust-up in the wine tasting world. R.H. Phillips has unveiled a 2002 shiraz complete with screwcap. And Washington winery Columbia Crest is selling its well-received Two Vines shiraz in the same $8-10 price range that sees such healthy sales for Australian counterparts. "It's absolutely something that can compete with those," says Columbia Crest's Kari Leitch.

There may be even more potential in pinot gris. While a handful of U.S. drinkers seek out French-style pinot gris, aged in barrels and made in small batches, its Italian iteration has witnessed far more success.

Frequently aged in metal tanks and crafted for a young, fruity style, Italian pinot grigio has become the most popular imported varietal in this country, according to Impact. (Shiraz is gaining, though.) So it should be no surprise that market-minded wine firms have been quick to mimic the Italian style.

California giants like Turning Leaf and Robert Mondavi's Woodbridge label offer pinot grigio under $9. Hogue Cellars, of Prosser, Wash., started making pinot gris in 1998, but retooled its packaging after it was acquired by Canadian firm Vincor, opting for a brighter, Tuscan-red label. The contents didn't change at all. "We liked the wine but it wasn’t selling very well," says Hogue winemaker Co Dinn. "It just got the same good wine into more people's hands."

This is not, to be fair, a purely American phenomenon. Even in the Old World, vintners have taken notice of the whims of American branding. Big-time French négociant Barton & Guestier now sells syrah as shiraz. And if Italy’s Puglia region prides itself on its primitivo, winemakers like La Corte sell their version as zinfandel. (The two are often, though not universally, considered the same.)

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Nor is it wholly new. American syrah can now be called shiraz in no small part because winemaker Daryl Groom, newly arrived from Australia’s Penfolds Wines, was shocked in 1991 to discover that the federal government wouldn’t let him sell his new reserve bottling at California’s Geyser Peak as shiraz. “I just wanted to get the wine out there,” Groom says.

Though Groom notes the same grapes can easily go into wine under either name, he needless to say prides himself on fashioning his shiraz as he did back home. And Geyser Peak has taken American shiraz well beyond the everyday wine realm, with its Bin shiraz retailing at $100.

Winemakers — and their beancounters — seem happy with the name changes. But not everyone is convinced. Oregon, which pioneered pinot gris in this country, actually prohibits wineries from using the populist grigio designation. The regulation is intended as a nod to the state’s rootstock, derived from French vine clones, and a firmly French winemaking style.

“Really, it’s out of respect,” says Kirsten Wall of the Oregon Wine Board. “And we don’t want to confuse people.”

Briefly ...
Hogue, which we’ve noted before for its work overhauling bottle closures, last week released results of a 30-month study on corks and cork alternatives. Tasters were most upbeat about screw caps on both chardonnay and merlot, finding the wines fruitier and fresher than with synthetic or natural corks.

Natural corks lagged far behind. Unlikely to sway partisans who believe red wines need natural cork to introduce the oxidation that helps a good red deepen over time, but more ammo for the screwcappers. And it helps explain Hogue’s recent decision to ditch corks.

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