The purpose of this post is to set out what you should expect to find when you grab a bottle off a shelf label-wise. The label is a very, very important piece of the wine puzzle, and the bad news for consumers is that there isn’t a whole lot of uniformity when it comes to satisfying each governing body’s labeling requirements.

Perhaps the subtitle should be, “After all, you should have far better things to do with your time than rigorously study wine.” But at the same time, people are drinking wine like never before. We are perhaps a generation or two from being as comfortable with wine as an everyday beverage as our European brethren are, but the day will come. After all, the United States is the world’s No. 1 consumer at 33 million hectoliters annually. That’s about 871,000,000 gallons!

Anything that can be said about the swirls of confusion relating to Burgundy’s whites certainly applies to the reds as well. More so, actually, because in the region’s heart, the Côte d’Or, there is more red than white made. The white-hot pinot noir is the grape, and because it is the only authorized one for reds, it is also just about the only straightforward thing about Burgundy. But that is as far as the simplicity goes.

Perhaps the only straightforward thing that can be said about white wines from Burgundy is that they are all made with chardonnay (technically, that’s not even true; there is one other authorized white grape, aligoté, two, if you include the minuscule amount of pinot blanc planted, but you’re likely to rarely come across them—though aligoté does have its adherents—so most treat them as though they don’t exist).

I hesitate to even use the word etiquette because our restaurant experiences now—even at white-tablecloth venues—are vastly less formal—some might say, less stuffy! My goal in this post is to help you navigate those steps by explaining why they are what they are and point out which are silly.

We’ll take up right where we left off in Part 1. You’ve chosen a bottle, the somm or server has presented it for your approval and you nod yes because it’s the correct one. Your bottle is then opened and when it is, something happens that has flummoxed most diners since bottles have been opened at restaurant tables.

Few regions in the wine world are as worshiped, and at the same time misunderstood, as Burgundy. The wines, Chardonnay for the whites and Pinot Noir for the reds, are certifiably wonderful, more so now than at any other time in the region’s long winemaking history.

The main chapters are named after a grape—or in three cases, primarily blends—and organized as follows: There is an introductory essay on that chapter’s grape, which is then followed by a recipe list, an intro to the recipe, the recipe itself, and, finally, “Kitchen Wisdom” and “What to Drink” entries.