Wine: Cantenac Brown's flagship and second wines

[Mike Buckley]

Chateau Cantenac Brown is in the French wine region of Margaux, Bordeaux. Cantenac represents the name of the commune and Brown is the name of the estate's first owner, a Scotsman. The winery makes only three red wines and a white wine. Its flagship Third Growth Grand Cru shown below on the left and its second wine on the right are its top red wines. Notice that though the bottles are not the same shape, both feature the winery's Tudor castle on the label, the only castle of that style in Bordeaux.

I just love the design of the Brio wine label with the estate's name displayed within the "O," so I made a close-up of just that part of the label for the second photo. That's the largest magnification I've ever made of a wine label.

Setups
First Photo: The background and tabletop are a purple shirt draped over a styrofoam platform. A small continuous-light lamp fitted with a diffusion sock is high in the front left area. A white reflector on the tabletop in front of the scene brightens the labels. The lamp and reflector create bands of brightness on the labels to help define the round shape of the bottles. A long, narrow lamp built into the handle of a flashlight handheld above and behind the bottles softly brightens the fabric just enough to create separation between the subjects and the background.

Second Photo: It was nothing other than a stroke of sheer luck that I liked how my makeshift studio's fluorescent light mounted in the ceiling on the right side of the scene lit the label. In the five years I've been studiously doing tabletop photography, this is my first photo made using that light source. Even then I had no plan to use it. A white card on the right side reflected light onto that side of the label. The other side is brightened by light reflected by a piece of translucent vellum bent in the shape of the bottle. The two reflectors left two primary parts of the label in shadow tones, helping to define the label's shape. The brightest area on the label is the section displaying the winery's name within the letter "O," which is such a favorite of mine as mentioned above.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[bnnrcn]

#1 is very striking Mike, the labels look really elegant and I like the color contrast very much

[mugge]

Mike, I like the way the shadow in the O in the second picture defines the name of the Winery. However, ( with excellence come great responsibilities), the shadow in the first picture hide the name of the winery a tad
Cheers Ole

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, everyone!

the shadow [in the "O"] in the first picture hide the name of the winery a tad

So true! Probably more than a tad.

That doesn't bother me for at least a couple reasons. The name of the winery is so small on that label that it's really not important for it to stand out. (I realize the converse argument is that because it's so small, matters shouldn't be made worse by displaying it within shadow tones.) The name of the winery isn't all that important because we're supposed to know who makes Brio without being informed by information on the label. And that leads to the following.

The French wine industry has long been stubborn about assuming the buying public is supposed to know about wine on their own. Unlike in most parts of the world, I'm told many families in France serve wine to young children on a daily basis and people grow up in France learning about wine much more than in other countries.

As an example, though all five of the Bordeaux wineries that make First Growth Grand Cru wine display that fact on their front label, very few of the wineries that make Second, Third, Fourth or Fifth growth Grand Cru wine display the growth on their label. Indeed, the winery that makes the Third Growth Grand Cru in the photo shown above doesn't include that fact on the label. We're supposed to know that information like most wine lovers in France would already know.

Similarly, lots of French wineries don't display the grape species used to make the wine on their label. Neither of the two bottles displayed in the above photo indicate on either the front or rear label the grapes used to make the wine. We're supposed to know that a red Burgundy is made from Pinot Noir and that a white Burgundy is made from Chardonnay. We're also supposed to know that a red Bordeaux is made from a blend of at least Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot perhaps with a few other grapes as well, or that a white Bordeaux is made primarily from Sauvignon Blanc. That information can usually be found on the Internet but sometimes even doing that is difficult. More important, why should we have to do that when it would be so easy to display the information on the bottle?

[bje07]

You make me salivate Mike

More important, why should we have to do that when it would be so easy to display the information on the bottle?

For French people the main thing is to taste, not to know

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, Jean!

For French people the main thing is to taste, not to know

Various grape species have a different taste. How do the French people know what they want to taste if the information about the grapes isn't on the bottle? I've been repeatedly told that they know because they grow up learning this stuff; they grow up learning that a Bordeaux red wine is made mostly of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot just like they grow up learning that ketchup is made from tomatoes.

[bje07]

Mike, we know by birth what a Bordeaux, a wine of Alsace, a Côtes du Rhone and so many others to their taste so specific. We do not drink wine from the baby bottle but ....

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks for confirming everything I had heard about France's wine culture.