Here’s a wine fact that on reflection seems self-evident, but that sometimes surprises people who hear it for the first time:
There are two kinds of wine. There are wines made by farmers who grow their own grapes and there are bulk-wines assembled by corporate agribusiness, bottled at “wineries” that have nothing to do with making wine.
OK, so the real truth is that there are shades of gradation between them, too. The point is, that if you care at all about which kind you drink, and if you’d like to know more about it than the score it was “awarded” by an advertising-driven shiny magazine, you should learn how to read the labels.
In fact, learning to read the labels for their indication of the concentration of a wine’s human content – was it made by an actual person, or fashioned by a marketing department in an industrial winery – is one of the most valuable skills you can acquire. Sometimes the information is proudly spelled out on the front label. More often it’s obscured in ambiguous phrases on the back label (with legal meaning that most “brand managers” hope you’ll never learn). Really understanding the labels won’t guarantee that you’ll like every bottle you decide to buy, but it can help you avoid wasting your time and money on “nobody-home, over-cropped junk.”
To learn the rules, follow the links below:
california wine labels
italian wine labels
french wine labels
champagne labels