Chilean wineries remove terms “reserva” and “reserved” from new labels

Reserved, reservation or grand reservation. These are terms that differentiate the quality grade of each bottle manufactured and which serve as guidelines for consumer choices when purchasing, especially for drinks produced in the so-called “new world”.

However, a movement of winemakers has begun to abandon the use of the nomenclature, as they believe that its use has been “trivialized”.

One of the pioneer wineries in this movement was the Chilean TerraNoble . The winemakers decided to add words from the local vocabulary to try to characterize the potential of the bottles.

The wines that we used to know as “reserved”, those that belong to the entry line, were named “Civilians ”, which translated from Latin means “citizen”. Subsequently, the most elegant and complex wines received the name “Azara ”, a tribute to the shrub most found in the Maule Valley terroir.

Those that require more rigor in production, commonly known as “gran reserva”, also began to refer to the nature of the vineyards, gaining the name “Algarrobo ”, a tree typical of Chile.

Second Gonzalo Badilla export director at TerraNoble, the idea is that consumers start buying their wines through other pillars such as sustainability and appreciation of the place where production takes place.

Furthermore, there are also countless reports of people who end up confusing the terms “reservations” with those of controlled designations of origin (DO) or geographical indications (IG).

The acronyms are controlled by international laws and require wineries to meet a series of requirements to be able to receive the titles, as is the case with the DOC's (Denominazione d'Origine Controllata) in Italy or the AOC's in France (Appellation d'origine contrôlée) .

In the producers' view, the movement is seen as another form of simplify the world of wine and facilitate access to consumers, especially young people.