Can you read wine?

Can you judge a book by its cover? Obviously not. However, you can judge a wine by its label.

If you aim to get to know a wine by prodding, smelling, or looking at it, you may not get very far. However, reading its label or just looking at it (if you're a wine buff) will help you succeed in that endeavor. The wine label gives a lot away to the consumer. However, this happens only if the wine producer deems it necessary to put all the information about the wine on that little piece of paper stuck to the bottle. Unfortunately, some producers think that their job stops at bottling that precious liquid. On the other hand, some producers come up with state-of-the-art graphics to put on the bottle, showing the harvest dates, acidity levels, aroma, undertones and whatnot. This does not affect the quality of the wine, but the customer's perception of it. Instead of sticking to the old favorites, they might be open to risk by trying something new.

Some companies spend a fortune just to make the label as appealing as possible. One example of that is Chateau Mouton- Rothschild in Bordeaux. Every year they invite a famous artist to design their label- Picasso, Warhol, and Kandinsky to name a few. In California, Stone Creek Cellar produced a Merlot and labeled it as 'Klingon Blood Wine' as a gimmick. In making the label attractive with art, however, the space on the label gets too occupied to have any other details on it.

1975 Mouton. The wine is past its best now, but collectors are still attracted to the bottles. They like to have a complete set of Mouton Artist Bottles.

There are two kinds of wine labels, New World and the Old World. The New World emphasizes the variety of the grape and often sports a black label, with details about what to expect from that wine. When it comes to the Old World, however, informative black labels are rather scarce. The Old World emphasizes the place of origin like Chianti, Sancerre, Rioja, et al. Without the help of an expert, a novice would never be able to understand anything about that wine!

While the New World is rather simple, they run a risk of being too simplistic. Taking that into consideration, quality-minded New World producers now take care of mentioning the place of origin as well. As a result of this, New World wine labels are more wordy, but informative than their Old World counterparts.