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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Buying wine - are you blank about Blanc de Blanc and plonk?

At the airport or supermarket wondering what those wine labels mean?
Blanc de Blanc means white (wine) made from white (grapes).

    That's usually white sparkling wine, Champagne if from the Champagne region of North East France.
   Champagne and other white wines are the 3Cs: Champagne, on chalky soil, from Chardonnay white grapes.
   (Chardonnay is a village, not in the Champagne region but further south of Champagne in Burgundy. A wine expert tells me the finest white wines in the world are white burgundies.)
(At the southern end of Burgundy you get Beaujolais.)

   (The German name for Pinot Noir grape is Spatburgunder - meaning late Burgundy, late to ripen? or lately or formerly from Burgundy.)

   Blanc de Noir is white (sparkling) wine from a black grape, Pinot Noir. Noir is French for black.
(Pinot is a kind of grape. You find more than one grape starting with the name Pinot then the colour. Pinot Gris is grey - a white grape with a reddish mottle.)

  Blanc de Noir is a white sparkling wine from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.

For more details see a book called Wine Grapes by Jancis Robinson.

Angela Lansbury is a travel writer, speaker, speech coach and English teacher.

PS Plonk is supposed to be the English language attempt to say Blanc. Those not fussy about wine would just ask for a bottle of white, Blanc, called it Plonk.


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