Wine-ing

This is late in coming since I am now surrounded by delicious beer rather than delicious wine; however seeing as I have just recently been enlightened I will share my new found knowledge.  Do you drink wine?  Have you ever drunk French wine?  If so you may have noticed something special about the cork of a French bottle, well not exactly the cork but the foil.  

In French this is usually called: la capsule (CRD)

Aka'F: l'opercule, la pastille, le sceau, la capsule-congé

This is the thing that covers up the cork and in France it has the symbol of Marianne (the female symbol of the French Republic) stamped onto it.  Ok so we have the symbol of France but why is it on the bottle of wine in the first place and why is it important?  First if you have seen this symbol you have just drunk a wine that was made in France and technically destined for French people because this cap means that it has been taxed as an alcohol in France, wines from France that do not have this stamp cap didnt pay duties and were meant to be drunk by non-Frenchies, which for some reason makes me suspicious.  

Secondly, the color of the cap tells you a little bit about the wine.  

Green-very good, AOC 

Blue-not so good, table wine

*new* Brick Red (literally wine dregs red) -any wine (you aren't sure how good it is)

Yellow- Armagnac/Cognac 

Orange-liquor 

Lastly the cap tells you the number of the department (kind of like a county in a state) where the wine was bottled, the type of bottler (a middle man bottler or bottled at the winery {R,N,E}) and their official number as well as of course the amount of wine which is usually 75cl or 750ml for an average bottle.  

You can find out so much about the wine before you even open it up; the style of wine, the grapes, the region, the color.  

 

Ahh the suspense is killing me!