How to Read a Wine Label

How to Read a Wine Label

Let’s imagine that you're in the Fine Wine and Spirits Store and you want to buy a wine that you haven’t tried yet. You have nothing to go by other than the label. Will the label tell you anything you should know?

Many people wonder what they should look for on a wine bottle, and there are whole books written about how to read a wine label.  In a sea of wine labels, are there certain things to look for across the board, or country to country? Here’s what to look for and what to ignore. There are a million caveats and exceptions, but here's some general advice:

Vintage

This is actually the first thing to read. You don't need to have a vintage chart in your pocket or care whether 2010 was a better year in the Chianti Classico region than 2012. The vast majority of wines at the store are meant to be consumed right away, so you want to make sure the wine isn't too old, particularly if you're buying it expecting lively, fresh fruitiness. You will routinely see five year old Pinot Grigio and two year old Beaujolais Nouveau at stores, for example.  As soon as you see that kind of age on wines like those, you know that you can skip them and move on (and possibly not shop there again).

Alcohol content

Too many wines today have too much alcohol, which leaves them unbalanced. Sure, there are some classic wines with fairly high alcohol levels, but many of today's regular table wines (Merlot, Chardonnay, Shiraz, and Zinfandel) have levels at 15% or above. Some of those might be terrific, but if you had nothing else to go on, you should look for alcohol content at about 14% and below.

Critter labels

 In the past few years, there has been a profusion of inexpensive wines with cute animals on the labels. These wines are generally less attractive than the labels. Of course, some good wines happen to have animals on the labels, consider Stag's Leap, Iron Horse from California, or the famous Fattoria Due Cane, for instance. When it comes to less expensive wines, however, the cute animal seems to be the main point of the wine. An amusing tale about the animal is often a clue that this is not as amusing a wine as the story.

Geography

The more specific that this information is, the better. A wine that says it's from Napa is probably a better bet than a wine that simply says it's from California. It's the same way all over the world. Unfortunately, this will also probably be reflected in the price, so this might not tell you much about value. There are fabled vineyards around the world, plots of land famous for producing high quality grapes. If you care enough to know a few of these, they might help you make an educated guess about quality.

Estate bottled

This means the people who made the wine also had a hand in growing the grapes on their own land. Generally, you will find this a good sign.

Reserve

On American wines, this doesn't mean anything, so ignore it. There are various rules around the world concerning words like Reserva, but there's no guarantee it means anything in other parts of the world. Unless you know something about the rules concerning, say, Rioja, where it has genuine significance, don't worry about it.

Old vines or vieilles vignes

Theoretically, older vines produce fewer, but more flavorful, grapes, but the problem is that no one has defined what an "old vine" is, so anyone can put this on the label. Again, ignore it.

A phone number

This will require some extra time, because we're talking about tiny type on the back of a label, but you'd be surprised how many small production wines these days include a phone number on the back and an invitation to call the winery. You will find that this is a sign of a highly personal winery. It's amazing how often the winemaker or winery owner answers the phone.

Details, details, details

There used to be a wine, Hanns Kornell's Sehr Trocken, one of a handful of sparkling wines made at his California winery. On the back label was a hand printed date of when the wine was "disgorged," when the sediment in the neck of a bottle of bubbly was removed and the temporary cap replaced by a real cork. On the front of each bottle was this notation: "Naturally fermented in this bottle," which is a big deal because that's the way real Champagne is made, with the final fermentation taking place in the bottle and not in a huge tank.

Some wineries, like Forge Cellars in the Finger Lakes, still give information like that, including the dates when the grapes were harvested and the wine bottled. Details like these make the point that these things mattered to the winemaker and that he or she understands that they have meaning for the consumer, too. They add to the feeling of the wine's authenticity.