Just when the French wine labels at a recent tasting were beginning to make sense, I stumbled across one that was totally different from the restThat was the label for the "dinosaur wine," which everybody at the March 24 French wine tasting at the Park Club called the Domain Font Mars Cabernet Sauvignon, 2007.

It got the nickname because the wine's Cabernet Sauvignon grapes were planted on land in the Languedoc region of France, where fossils of dinosaur eggs can be found -- a fact noted on the neck label of the bottle. The wine's red and black label also sported dinosaur figures.

But the oddest aspect of the label were the words "Cabernet Sauvignon" in bold at the top. French wines usually denote region rather than grape."That one is funny," said Salut Fine Wines co-owner Sam Alsaud, who coordinated the tasting. "What some French wineries are doing is making wines to ship directly here (to the United States)," where the type of grape is emphasized.

Most French wine labels carry the region where the wines were made as an indication of the grapes used for the wines. The French government allows certain grapes to be grown in certain areas. French wine drinkers, therefore, must learn what grapes are grown in the various regions of France.

Growers can't plant Chardonnay grapes in Bordeaux, for instance, or grow Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in Burgundy. Bordeaux yields Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot grapes. Burgundy yields Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Gamay grapes.

Thus, the French associate flavors with regions because they learn where the grapes grow.That's also why tables of wine at the recent French wine tasting offered by Salut were arranged by their regions of origin -- Provence, Burgundy, Languedoc, Rhone.

The French emphasize "terroir" -- how soil, landscape, climate and farming work together to create the particular tastes of various wine grapes.In contrast, the United States focuses its wine marketing on the type of grape used, so the name of the grape is front and center on American wine labels.

That's the way it is for a lot of New World wine producers such as those in Australia and Chile. Wine labels in Germany and Italy, on the other hand, can be similar to those in France, "but they're not as obsessive," said local wine teacher Jere Wilgus.

My favorite wine of the night turned out to be another exception, a French wine that had a label with a grape name, Gewurztraminer, on it -- Domaine Scherer Gewurztraminer. It was made in Alsace, near the border of France and Germany, and reflected German influence, Alsaud said."Reading French wine labels isn't easy," Alsaud said, chuckling. "It's really not."