Sep 04 2009
Riddle of the Wine Label
No doubt that wine lovers know the brand they like to drink, but if you are a newbie in wine or simply want to try something very new you will certainly face to a choice of wine. Lucky you are if there will be an opportunity to taste it before purchasing otherwise you will have to decide what to buy seeing only wine label.
Somebody will say that it’s very simple to understand the label of wine, another person will say in the opposite to him, but the truth is they will be both right.
The difficulty in understanding the label of wine is in the fact that wines are made in different countries therefore their labels differ. There are two main types in marks of wine called new world and old world wines.
Let’s have a talk about new world wine labels.
New world wines are named all wine kinds that were not made in traditional wine regions such as Europe, North Africa and Near West. Reading such wine labels is very simple for everybody, the other words all you need to know you’ll find on the label.
With help of new world wine labels you can get information about wine producer, year of vintage, region where that wine was made, containing of the alcohol in it. Wine varietal is situated on the label so you don’t need to guess it like in many cases with old wines. On the opposite side of the wine bottle on wines that were purchased in U.S.A. with no difference in what country they were produced, you will be notified about the influence of wine on your health also there you’ll find recommendations of pairing wine and maybe some old statement about this drink.
An example of new world wine label you can see in the picture.
Now our conversation will touch old world wine labels, but first let’s discover what wines are called “old world” wines.
If they talk about old world wines they talk about wines with long ancient history of wine producing. Usually we attribute to these wines: wines of France, wines of German, wines of Italy, wines of Portugal and Spain, wines of Austria. So practically all wines made from grapes grown in Europe are old world wines.
If you want to read wine label of old world wine you will have to read a riddle, but with some experience and knowledge it becomes easier. You should remember basic statements of this mark of wine. First of all, if you are searching for varietal of wine you should look for a field “location” that will tell you where grapes were grown. Old wine producers invest large sum of money to their wine yards, so if you know the region of growing you know possible types of grapes that were used to make it. If you know the grapes you can guess the wine varietal.
Old world wines give everybody an opportunity to discover wine geography and history.
Every purchased bottle is the next key to read the riddle of ancient wine history!
