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!  

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 15, 2015 at 9:29 PM

    Very interesting information about the cork and color of the foil wrap.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saint Jacques de Compostelle

Image
Hitchhiker, vagabond, drifter...pilgrim?  That's not a word you get to use every day.  In the very religious land that is France...psyche!  France although very catholic is not very religious anymore but do you remember the old French adage assume to never assume?  Every year pilgrims, not the buckle mayflower ones, make a trip to north western Spain.  The goal of the pilgrimage is the Catedral de Santiago de Compostela where supposedly lies the final resting place of St. James also known as James the son of Zebedee.  Spanish tradition goes that after preaching in Spain, James was subsequently beheaded in Jerusalem where apon his fellow disciples returned his body to Spain.  With the muslim moorish invasion of Spain the tomb of James was kept miraculously safe there apon beginning a pilgrimage to the very cathedral.   Its one of the 3 major pilgrimages the other two being Rome and Jerusalem starting in the 10th century.  Along the marked pathway the pilgrims find boarding houses wh
Read more

Chitis Cuisine

Image
 Just some pics to make you start drooling. La Carbonade Flamande La celerirave rapé Un Welsh La biere   Les endives (les chicons)  with ham and cheese, as a raw salad, or carmalised   Le maroille-and anything it touches Spéculoos   La chicorée   Les Frites
Read more

I'm on welfare, what!?

So I've mentioned a little thing called 'CAF' in the past, it's a little way to get some of your rent paid for by the government.  What hit me this time while I was filling out some of my paperwork was the differences between American welfare and the French social welfare systems.  In fact welfare isn't even the right word.  Welfare is what happens in the US, it's looked at as being for people in DIRE need and it isn't seen in the best of light, it's great if you can figure out some good programs but France is very different.  It's looked on as a sign of being savvy if you can figure out how (and the patience and diligence it takes to jump through bureaucratic hoops) to get reimbursed by the government, because in basis that's what it is.   Taxes in France are much higher than the United States, somewhere in the 40% income tax range and France loves to add on other taxes as well.  In your taxes you automatically have CAF, work accidents, care for
Read more