One of my abiding memories from my days editing Decanter magazine comes from the panel tastings we used to hold in the 10th-floor executive suite overlooking the Tate Modern. Twice a month, an august selection of wine writers and buyers would gather to give their verdict on a particular subset of wine. There were plenty of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhône tastings; a few Tuscan and Piedmont gatherings, the odd Rioja, German or Australian interloper, and occasional Californian, South African and South American arrivistes (it is to the magazine’s credit that tastings today span a far wider array of sources). But the most keenly anticipated of them all was that of the Médoc Crus Classés, with a few years’ bottle age.

After tasting and rating all the wines (blind), the panel would retire to the adjoining boardroom where there would be a discussion about winemaking trends, the merits of individual communes and the vintage as a whole, which informed the report published to accompany the scores. Then, the results would be revealed, the crib sheets handed out, and the tasters would check their verdicts to see which wines they had favoured. Invariably, with Bordeaux, the 1855 Classification was upended, and panel members were embarrassed – horrified – to find that they had rated Lafon-Rochet higher than Lafite. On one occasion, there was even a petition to ask what could be done to remedy this faux pas (nothing, but that’s another story…)

As the discussion descended into off-the-record chatter, the leftover wine from the most coveted bottles would be moved across to accompany the ensuing lunch. You might think that the bottles selected would be the standout performers from the tasting, but I was always amused how the panellists invariably asked for the First Growths, rather than the wines they had just scored more highly. They were effectively saying, ‘We don’t want to drink (and it was drinking at this stage, not tasting) the wines we felt were best – we want to drink these other, inferior wines, purely on the basis of their label.’

The tyranny of the label can be hard to avoid – and this was in the days before social media. Today, humble brags about last night’s Latour or Leroy have become so widespread as to merit an eye-roll rather than hands-raised emoji. Yet it is hard not to be seduced by the name. Consider yourself immune? Imagine I give you two glasses of Champagne to taste, blind. You favour, strongly, the one which you feel boasts more of that baked-bread character that you crave in good fizz. It turns out to be Nicolas Feuillatte; the other is Krug. I then give you the choice of the two bottles to take home. Which do you choose?

Then imagine you’re going to a fellow wine lover’s place for dinner that night. No self-respecting oenophile is going to either a) call themselves an oenophile (terrible word, employed here only to call it out as such); or b) take a bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte, no matter how good it tastes.

It would be different, perhaps, if the Feuillatte was a niche grower Champagne. A modish name favoured by the cognoscenti. Indeed there is some irony in the fact that the one bottle shot liable to win you more likes on your feed than a trophy bottle is a particularly recherché cuvée from an unheralded producer, ideally in an unvaunted region. A skin-contact Aligoté from Alto Adige, perhaps.

What, by contrast, would be the worst thing you could post? Something mainstream and mid-range. My two favourite wine types are Rioja and Aussie Chardonnay, but I tend to keep those bottles of Viña Ardanza and Vasse Felix Heytesbury off the grid.

The category of which I am most guilty of falling foul to this snobbery is own-label wines. No matter how much I tell myself that Berry Bros. & Rudd’s Swartland White is made by Eben Sadie, or its Côte d’Or Pinot Noir by Benjamin Leroux or its rosé fizz by Leclerc Briant, I just can’t get excited about a generic, merchant-branded label.
The Wine Society’s Generation series celebrates the retailer’s 150th anniversary via a range of superb wines, sourced from some of the world’s top produces to showcase the key styles that have defined the last century and a half. None are better than its Margaret River Red Blend, made by the estimable Vanya Cullen. I buy a lot of wine from The Wine Society, but I still can’t bring myself to buy this one, let alone put it on the ‘gram. Had it been in a Cullen livery though, I’d have been all over it.

It’s not quite the same as judging a book by is cover, but there are parallels. A few months back, I was sent a copy of Andrew Jefford’s Drinking with the Valkyries – a compendium of his most erudite writing from down the years. Even though I know it will be hugely entertaining and instructive, I can’t get beyond the dreary, funereal livery. It sits on my desk, unopened.

Label design is equally integral, particularly for those producers who don’t have a recognisable name to fall back on, or are from an old-school region where it can be hard to stand out. I’ve always found it hard to get excited about the Languedoc, even though I know there are plenty of wines there that over-deliver. So I was intrigued to read, on Henry Jeffreys’ always-entertaining Substack feed, of a Faugères that he touted as ‘fun and fresh’. Then I saw the label, which was anything but. I moved on…

Ultimately, all this comes down to prejudice – and probably says a lot more about me than it does anything else. It might also just be, of course, that we become less open-minded as we get older (and those Bordeaux tasters at Decanter tended to boast a fair few years’ experience). I remember, back in my early days at the magazine in my fresh-faced, wide-eyed twenties, making fun of the late Michael Broadbent for his proclivity to drink BBR’s Good Ordinary Claret every night. ‘Don’t you want to try these exciting new Slovenian ice wines or this Mexican Chenin Blanc?’ I asked the venerable writer. ‘Dear boy, I’ve done all my experimenting – now I want to enjoy my favourites’. The ultimate ‘I know what I like’, from a man whose library of tasting notes stretched to more than 90,000 wines. And at least he had no issue with own-label wines. More fool me…

Photo by Zachariah Hagy on Unsplash