Latest features 4Food's guide to choosing a wine

Date Published:

20/04/2009

Is your wine choice based more on the prettiest label than contents of the bottle? Brush up on your varieties and vintages with the 4Food guide to wining with your dining

Reading labels

Labels are individual to each producer, since they are part of the identity of a wine, although many aspects of them are governed by legislation, national and international.

Although some facts about the wine in the bottle are mandatory on all labels (quantity, degree of alcohol, name of producer or bottler, country of origin), legislation and label habits will vary from one country to another. And producers have some degree of liberty, although less and less. Many wines also now use two labels, front and back, in order to simplify the facial appearance while providing all the 'street legal' information required. They may also use this space to included additional, factual information on how the wine is made, or, more usually, a sales pitch about how fantastic it tastes.

A brand name or the name of a producer or his estate (which may or may not be associated with terms such as château, domaine, tenuta, estate etc…) will nearly always be prominent.

To attempt to give the consumer some idea of the style of the wine in the bottle, two main approaches are used around the world: place of origin and grape variety. Increasingly these are now used together. To simplify things, wines from Europe tend to identify themselves primarily by the place where the grapes are grown (Bordeaux, Champagne, Chianti, Rioja etc…) and you may only find the grape variety or varieties used on the back label, if at all.

On the other hand, wines from the Americas, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand will nearly always use the grape variety as the prime stylistic element. But you will increasingly also find the area in the New World country from which it comes: Napa, Stellenbosch, Marlborough or Mendoza, for example.

It is often quite hard to tell from what is said on a label whether a wine is sweet or dry. Only a few of the world’s finest sweet wines actually print the word 'sweet' on their labels. One is supposed to know that a French wine from Sauternes, for example, or a German wine which has the word Trockenbeerenauslese on its label is going to be very sweet. This is one reason why a good wine retailer is so useful.

A year printed on the label means that the wine comes from the harvest of that particular year. This is known as a vintage.

Read up different wine types and styles