You can't legislate wine quality

...but people keep trying. Plus, a quiz!

Penedès, Cataluña. January 2025.

This Saturday is International Cava Day. If you pop a bottle of Cava - of which, by the way, there are many fine examples that you might find thanks to a particularly thorough report that an English bloke published in January - you’ll be diving into one of the most bonkers, infuriating, insoluble, politicised headaches in the world of wine. That’s reason enough, right?

Cava, Corpinnat, Classic Penedès et al is a test case for a theory of the advancement of wine quality that goes something like this:

Great wines all share particular processes in their production. Therefore, if we legislate that (insert-terminology-that-few-consumers-understand) can only apply when these conditions are met, we will create categories that promote the quality of our top wines.

Sounds straightforward? If so, I challenge you, bubbleheads, to a Wine Rules quiz. Put any answers you know in the comments…and don’t use Chat GPT, because even it gets some of these wrong…

1. A Champagne you are serving has 3g/l sugar in it. Which of the following can it NOT be labelled? Zero dosage, Brut Nature, Extra Dry, Extra Brut, Brut.

2. Name a difference between the requirements of a Corpinnat and a Cava de Guarda Superior Gran Reserva

3. er, what is Cava de Guarda Superior Gran Reserva again? Ah yes. But what is a Cava de Paraje Calificado?

4. Machine harvesting is potentially quality-limiting for sparkling wine. Name two traditional method sparkling wine appellations outside France that may be machine harvested, though…

5. Name a difference between Classic Penedès and Corpinnat

6. Name one way in which the ‘Sussex’ wines (ie from the Sussex PDO) deliver the promise of higher quality versus “English Sparkling Wine” PDO (apart from the wines having to come from Sussex, of course).

7. Champagne’s yield limit is set at 9,000 kg/per hectare for the 2025 harvest. A producer has 12,000kh per hectare on their vines. They are able to harvest is all, and all of it will become Champagne. How?

8. What is ‘Great British Classic Method’?

9. What can’t an ‘Elaborador Integral’ of Cava do that a Corpinnat producer can?

10. You meet a Champagne grower in a village. They tell you they have their own champagne brand, and that their vineyards are HVE (sustainability) certified. They are not a house - they don’t buy any grapes. You drink their champagne. You are drinking wine from uncertified vineyards. How?