page_title: Chapoutier
section_title: Braille labeling
hierarchical_section_title: Chapoutier / Braille labeling
caption_attribution_description: Braille wine label photo
context_page_description: Chapoutier, or Maison M. Chapoutier, is a winery and négociant business situated in Tain-l'Hermitage in the Rhône region in France. Chapoutier produces wine from appellations across the Rhône region, but it is typically their top Hermitage wines, both red and white, that receive the most attention and accolades. Chapoutier's wine labels are distinctive because of their inclusion of Braille writing on all labels since 1996.
context_section_description: Chapoutier was the first wine producer to introduce braille on its labels, starting in 1994 with the Monier de la Sizeranne Hermitage wine. By 1996 this was expanded to include all wines bottled and sold by the Chapoutier winery. Michel Chapoutier had the idea to include braille on the label after hearing his friend the singer Gilbert Montagné, who is blind, explaining on TV that he would have to take someone with him into the store in order to identify each bottle of wine. The Monier de la Sizeranne vineyard that Chapoutier now owns and makes wine from, was founded by the Sizeranne family and the first and subsequent braille printing on this wine is a tribute to that family and specifically a blind member of the family, Maurice de La Sizeranne who was the founder and president of the French Association for the Blind and also developed an abbreviated version of braille. 
  The information presented in the braille print includes the producer, the vintage, the vineyard and region as well as the colour of the wine.
caption: A Chapoutier Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine label with braille.
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