A Wine's Home Is Its Castle PARIS-Driving through the vineyards of Bordeaux, I often have to chuckle at what passes for a "chateau." Certainly there is no shortage of impressive neoclassical, neo-Renaissance and neo-Gothic piles, many of them erected in the 18th and 19th centuries and bearing witness to the wealth that wine has long brought to the region. And then there are the other chateaus: crumbling barns, suburban bungalows or, sometimes, little more than toolsheds. The only common denominator is that they are surrounded by vineyards. One might be tempted to ask that if the French themselves can't even control the use of the term, keeping out internal pretenders, then what business do they have prohibiting American vintners from labeling their wines as Chateau This or Chateau That? This, indeed, is what many journalists asked this week, writing articles about how the French wine industry was supposedly up in arms over an American plot to usurp the term "chateau" for wine labels. The French, according to a flurry of news articles that editors slotted into the ever-popular rubric, "France resists globalization," want to keep these terms to themselves, walling off their wine industry from the rest of the world. It is, of course, always easy for a reporter to find a grumpy French vigneron, preferably with a mustache and a beret and driving a beaten-up Citroen, to provide the quotes. The reality is slightly more nuanced, and the fight over words probably has more to do with the backroom dealings of trans-Atlantic trade negotiations than with the supposed French reflex toward cultural protectionism. In fact, wine from a number of countries can already be sold in France under "chateau" labels, including the produce of non-Francophone lands like Chile, Italy and Lebanon. I'm sure there are a few Bordelais chatelains who are unhappy about this, but I doubt that the average French consumer, filling his or her shopping cart at the supermarket, notices or cares. Outside Bordeaux, relatively few French wine producers even use the term on their labels. That is because "chateau" has a specific, non-architectural meaning in the French wine industry, designating wine from grapes that were grown on the surrounding vineyards and fermented into wine on the site. Outside Bordeaux, most wine producers have land in a variety of vineyards, so they choose designations like "domaine," rather than "chateau," for their brand name, and then mention the name of the vineyard if this is permitted under the regulations. Geographic origin matters in wine. Indeed, it is the foundation of the European approach to winemaking, which holds that terroir has a huge influence over the taste-and the financial value-of different wines. The French, especially, are not going to throw away casually the competitive edge that one of their most successful exports enjoys. Indeed, the French have been fighting seemingly never-ending battles in export markets over the abuse of geographic designations like Champagne, Chablis and Burgundy. Though the United States has tightened up its rules, you can still find holdouts like "California Champagne" on American store shelves. Imagine the outrage in California if French vintners decided to label cheap boxed wine as "French Napa Valley Cabernet." This is not the only trans-Atlantic difference over wine. The dispute over "chateau" is part of a broader set of talks over agricultural trade rules, in which U.S. and E.U. negotiators are trying to reconcile differences over the definition of organic wine. As the rules stand, European organic wine might not qualify for an organic label in the United States, even though, by some standards, the standards are stricter in the European Union. There was speculation that negotiators might reach an agreement this week, but now it appears that additional rounds of talks will be needed. To make the talks go more smoothly and encourage the spirit of compromise, might I make a wine suggestion? The negotiators could open a bottle of Château Leoville-Barton, one of the greatest Bordeaux wines - but one whose vineyards do not include any chateau building at all. The wine is made at the neighboring Château Langoa-Barton, which has the same owner.