Wine · 3.5

Reading a North Carolina wine label

Produced means fermented here; cellared does not. Three phrases, four seconds, and a wine placed better than by any tasting note.

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Most of what is printed on a wine label is required by federal regulation, and a few of the required phrases carry precise meanings that almost nobody reads them as carrying.

Produced, cellared, vinted

The most useful distinction on any American label, and the least known.

Produced and bottled by means that at least seventy-five per cent of the wine was fermented at the address given. That is a claim about winemaking.

Cellared and bottled by or vinted and bottled by means the wine was subjected to cellar treatment and bottled there, and does not mean it was fermented there. The juice or the finished wine may have come from anywhere.

Neither is dishonest and they describe different businesses. A visitor choosing between two bottles from the same county can learn a great deal from which phrase each carries.

Where the grapes came from

A state name on the label requires at least seventy-five per cent of the grapes to have been grown in that state. A named viticultural area requires at least eighty-five per cent from within its boundaries, which is a stricter claim.

This state has several such areas, established from 2003 onwards, most of them inland where European varieties succeed. A bottle naming one of them is making a narrower and more informative claim than one naming the state.

The grape on the front

Naming a variety requires at least seventy-five per cent of the wine to be that variety. The remaining quarter is unstated and is a winemaking decision rather than a concealment.

A wine with no variety named is often a blend of several in proportions that would fail the threshold, and blends are not lesser wines. The absence of a grape name is not the absence of information; it is a different kind of wine.

The year

A vintage date on a wine labelled with a viticultural area requires at least ninety-five per cent of the grapes to have come from that year. For a wine labelled with a state, the threshold is lower.

Nothing on the label says when it was bottled or how long it has been on a shelf, which for most of what is poured at a festival matters more than the vintage does.

The alcohol statement

Required, and permitted a tolerance in either direction, so the printed figure is approximate by design. It is still the single most useful number on the bottle: it tells you roughly how the wine will feel and, in the case of a low figure on a wine that is not obviously light, hints that fermentation was stopped with sugar remaining.

What is not on it

Residual sugar, almost never. Acidity, almost never. Whether the wine saw oak, and if so what kind and for how long. Whether anything was added during winemaking beyond what must be declared.

None of those is hidden in any sinister sense; there is simply no requirement to print them, and the space on a back label goes to prose instead.

The prose on the back

Unregulated except that it must not mislead, and written by the producer or by a marketing agency. Tasting notes on a back label are an advertisement for the wine inside and are frequently written before the wine was finished.

The exception worth reading is any sentence describing how the wine was made, which is the part producers include when they are proud of something specific.

The government warning

Required text, identical on every bottle, and worth having read once rather than never. It is on the back in small type and it says what it says.

Using all this at a table

Look at the front for the appellation and the variety, then turn the bottle over and find which of the three bottling phrases it carries. Those three facts take about four seconds and place the wine more accurately than any tasting note.

The short version

Produced means fermented here. An area name is a stricter claim than a state name. A variety on the front means three quarters, not all. And the things you most want to know, the sugar and the acid, are the things the label does not have to tell you.

The phrase that means most

Estate bottled is defined more tightly than any of the others: the winery must be in the named viticultural area, must have grown all the grapes on land it owns or controls, and must have carried out every step from crushing to bottling on its premises.

It is the strongest claim available on an American label, and because it is demanding, relatively few bottles carry it.

The other thing the label tells you

Net contents, which sounds trivial and is occasionally informative. Bottles smaller than the standard size are common for dessert and fortified wines, for the reason the entry on port gives, and a smaller bottle at a similar price is not necessarily worse value.

Reading a label from elsewhere

European labels carry different required information and organise it differently: the appellation does much of the work that a variety name does on an American bottle, and the grape is frequently not named at all.

The habit of turning the bottle over transfers. What you find there differs by country and is worth thirty seconds anywhere.

The habit worth forming

Turn every bottle over before buying it. Four seconds, three facts, and it works on wine from anywhere.

Also in this part

• 1.1

  Why a dry red and a sweet chocolate fight

  The wine must be at least as sweet as the food. Everything else in this entry is a qualification of that sentence.

  Read it →
• 1.2

  Tannin and fat: what happens in the mouth

  Astringency is not a flavour. You are noticing the absence of lubrication that was there a moment ago.

  Read it →

For further context, see TTB wine-label guide.