Even for the avid wine drinker, deciding on a bottle of wine can be a daunting task with so many varieties of wine on the market today. Wine labels dont help either with the various terms in foreign languages and the small print. Sometimes reading a wine label makes you feel like you need a secret decoder ring, but rest assured that this is not to confuse you the customer, but rather to help you. The information on the label is there to tell you about the wine and also the winery and conditions of production. Once you have an idea of what to look for on a wine label, deciphering it shouldnt require much effort.
The Brand Name: This is the name of the company that has produced the wine. Most often this is the name of the winery or bottler if the winery has several different brands.
Vintage: Most wines will carry the vintage somewhere on the bottle, although this is not a mandatory requirement and will not be on all bottles. A vintage is the year that the grapes used were harvested. Most wine producing countries have laws that require at least 85 percent of the grapes used to be harvested in the specified year of vintage although in the United States this figure can...