How to Read Wine Labels

New World Wine Labels

• Wine type: The basic category into which the wine falls—table wine, dessert wine, or sparkling wine. In the United States, table wine refers to a red or white wine that has no more than 14% alcohol.
• Growing region: The region where the grapes were grown. In the United States, a wine cannot have a regional appellation label unless at least 85% of the grapes were actually grown in that region. Rules in other countries vary.
• Reserve designation: An essentially meaningless piece of information, since no rules govern what “reserve” means. On one bottle “reserve” might mean higher quality; on another it might mean nothing.
• Vintage: The year the grapes (or at least 85% of the grapes) were grown and harvested. Wine gurus know not just where the best wines come from but also the best vintages for each region.
• Bottler information: The location and name of the bottler. If a vineyard or winery bottles its own wine, then it can call its wine estate bottled. Estate bottled wines are often taken to be better crafted than wines bottled off-site.

European Wine Labels

• QWSPR wines: The best wines are marked by a place name followed by a specific phrase indicating that the wine is what the European Union calls a Quality Wine Produced in a Specific Region (QWSPR). Some European countries actually have two QWSPR designations to mark both high- and superior-quality wine.
• Table wines: The next two levels of quality in European wines are referred to as table wines. (Note that in America the words “table wine” refer to alcohol content, but in Europe the term indicates quality.) Better European table wines have a specific geographic region included in their name; lower-quality table wines don’t.