M. Chapoutier Monier de la Sizeranne Hermitage
You all know someone like me – when I walk into a wine shop, I like to walk up and down the aisles just looking at the many different types and styles of wine. And, to be honest, I enjoy the vastly different and creative wine label designs almost as much as I enjoy the wine itself. Recently, however, I realized that not all of us have the luxury of “judging a wine by its label” if you will.
No matter if you are a part-time or full-time wine drinker, the information on the label is the most important – when it comes down to purchasing a wine, those details, like the appellation, vintage, grape type, and style, are why people buy wine. Those details are what make the wine, so how do you ensure that all wine lovers have access to that information?
A quick Google search on “wines for the visually impaired” immediately pointed me to the infamous M. Chapoutier family of wines from the Rhône region of France. M. Chapoutier has been making wine since the early 1800s, and was the first wine producer to introduce Braille on its labels starting in 1996 with the Monier de la Sizeranne Hermitage wine. They have since expanded to include Braille on all wines bottled and sold by the Winery.
Monier de la Sizeranne is a wine named for Mauriece Monier de la Sizeranne, a local “son” of the area who lost his sight at nine-years-old. He attended the National Institute for Blind Children, and then went on to become a professor at the institute and a lover of literature. The Sizeranne family is known for a small piece of land it owns in the Heritage appellation, a growing site from which Chapoutier sources fruit for the Monier de la Sizeranne.
In the early 1990s, Michel Chapoutier spent over a year researching and developing a printing press designed expressly to print Braille wine labels. “This noble gesture is one of the ways that Michel expresses his love and devotion for the terroir of his land,” says Katarina Maloney of Terlato Wines, “by paying homage to one of its most famous sons, Maurice Monier de la Sizeranne.”
Now, anyone who reads Braille can pick up a bottle of M. Chapoutier wine and find out where it is made (the appellation), the name of the wine, the vintage (year it was bottled), and the color (red, white or rosé). For any wine novice or lover, these are the most important pieces of information that wine labels offer, but haven’t always been accessible to everyone. Until now.
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