It’s all gris – or grigio – for the labeling mill

TASTINGS ... with David Bray

To gris or not to gris – the question
may doubly
Be posed of grigio, such are
The smells and flavours of this newly
Favoured fruit of southern vines.

Enough already. Many among us tend to be confused by pinot gris and pinot grigio – different styles of white wine made from the same grape.

Gris is the richer, a fuller-bodied wine made from riper grapes and often with a touch of sweetness. It’s based on the pinot gris of Alsace, France. Grigio, based on a style of wine made in northern Italy, is lighter, crisper, drier and less complex. It is made from earlier-harvested grapes, which naturally make lower-alcohol wine. They are good dining matches with different foods.
Some of the people who make and sell them reckoned it would be a good idea if gris and grigio had labels indicating their properties. And so it has come to pass.
A new labelling system, the Pinot G Style Spectrum, a visual presentation of a scale from crisp to luscious, is about to show up on some wineries’ bottles.
It was thought up by the Australian Wine Research Institute in co-operation with the bloke behind the idea prime mover, winemaker Kevin McCarthy of T'Gallant winery on the Mornington Peninsula.
Unveiling the spectrum in Sydney, the AWRI's Peter Godden said McCarthy phoned him one day and asked: “Can the AWRI do some analysis which would define the difference between gris and grigio?” It took about three years and the result was launched earlier this month. To qualify for a label, the wine is “fingerprinted” by the AWRI, which scientifically quantifies where on the scale (between crisp and luscious) the particular wine sits.
The label looks easy enough for would-be buyers to understand. The PinotG Style Spectrum labels will be first released on 2010 vintage wines from Foster’s and Cellarmasters wines, with other producers to follow next year.
I reckon it will catch on.
As Mr McCarthy said: “In future, I imagine people will walk into a shop and say, ‘I’d like a PG at three on the scale, please’. Before now we never had an objective scale to describe wine. It’s a whole new language.”