I’m sure that, at some time or another, we have all been attracted to a bottle of wine by something that appeared on the wine label. It might have been a logo or design, or some other bit of information on the label that made us pick it up. I’m also pretty sure that at some point you also returned a bottle to the rack, because you didn’t understand something on the label.

To help you gain a better understanding of the information that appears on a wine label, we’re going to start an ongoing series on wine labels, and how to read them. First up will be US wine labels. In many ways, these are the easiest wine labels to read, certainly easier than most European wine labels.

US wine labels are regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), a division of the Department of the Treasury. Wine labels are controlled by the TTB because they are the government agency that administers the taxation of alcohol.

Since the TTB is mainly concerned with taxes, they have relatively few requirements for what appears on a wine label, especially compared to Europe. The following items must be on a US wine label: the brand, the wine class, the bottling location, the alcohol content by volume, the volume of the container, a declaration of sulfites, and the health warning. Unlike European wine regulation systems, none of these requirements has anything to do with the quality of the wine in the bottle. US labels may have the least amount of useful information about the actual wine in the bottle.

Below are typical US front and back wine labels from our EatingVine tools. As you can see immediately, several of the requirements (wine class, declaration of sulphites, and health warning) aren’t on the sample front label. This is a key point of distinction between wine labels in the US and other countries – TTB considers the front and back wine labels to be one label, so information can spill over from the front to the back.

Front Wine Label (click label to see a larger version)

 

Back Wine Label

Before we examine the information that TTB requires on a label, let’s look at some items that are not required to be on a US wine label, but are usually the most eyecatching. These items must follow TTB regulations if they are listed.

Varietal – if the wine is varietally labeled, it must have at least 75% of the designated varietal. In our example label, it would mean that at least 25% of the wine could be something else, such as Merlot, Cabernet Franc, or anything else that the producer decides to add.

American Viticultural Area (AVA) – this is the American equivalent of the French Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC), and designates the origin of the grapes. If so labeled, at least 85% of the grapes used must come from the designated AVA.

Estate Bottled – if this is on the label, it means that 100% of the grapes used in the wine must be from land owned or controlled by the winery, and must be within an AVA. The wine must also be completely crushed, fermented, aged and bottled on the winery’s premises.

Vintage – if a vintage is labeled, then 85% of the grapes used must be from that year. However, if an AVA is also indicated, then 95% of the grapes must be from that year.

Now let’s examine each of the TTB requirements. The first, the brand, should be relatively straightforward, but isn’t. A brand may mean that the wine is made by an individual producer, from a single vineyard. However, that is frequently not the case, especially for the more commonly available branded wines. These wines are produced and distributed by large conglomerates, in bulk quantities. They are made with juice bought from any number of producers, and are produced in facilities far removed from the romantic notion of a small scale winery. An excellent example of this large scale production is Charles Shaw (Two-Buck Chuck) , the super-cheap wine sold at Trader Joe’s.

The second requirement is the wine’s class or designation. The class is the type of wine that’s in the bottle. The TTB recognizes nine classes of wine:

Class	Title	Description
Class 1	Table wine	Grape wine having an alcohol content of not less than 7% and not in excess of 14% alcohol by volume
Class 2	Sparkling Wine	Wines made sparkling by any of the natural methods (not injected with CO2)
Class 3	Carbonated Grape Wine	Wine which is injected with carbon dioxide.
Class 4	Citrus Wine	Wine made primarily of sound, ripe citrus fruit
Class 5	Fruit Wine	Wine made primarily of sound, ripe fruits other than grapes or citrus
Class 6	Wine from Other Agricultural Products	Wine made from sound agricultural products (vegetables)
Class 7	Aperitif Wine	Wine having an alcoholic content of not less than 15 percent by volume, compounded from grape wine containing added brandy or alcohol, flavored with herbs and other natural aromatic flavoring materials
Class 8	Imitation Wine	Wine containing synthetic materials
Class 9	Retsina Wine	Grape table wine fermented or flavored with resin

Fine wines will fall into Class 1, 2 and 7. I have never run across a “wine” in Class 8 (Imitation Wine), but the name alone sounds ominous enough that I don’t want to, and I doubt you will either.

Unlike the other requirements, there are exceptions to the class labeling rule. A wine does not have to state it’s class if the label states a varietal(s), or a geographic name with some varietal significance or geographic distinction.  In our example above, the class is not listed because the varietal (Cabernet Sauvignon) is stated. Another example would be Champagne – the geographic name is enough to imply that the wine in the bottle is sparkling.

The third requirement is the bottling location. The name and location of the bottler must be on the label. The bottler does not have to be the actual producer.

The fourth requirement is the alcohol content by volume (ABV). This is important to TTB primarily for taxing purposes. Wines above 14% ABV are considered “fortified” wine, and pay much higher Federal excise taxes than wines with less than 14% ABV. Here is where we run into some potentially misleading information on US wine labels.

For reasons of practicality, the TTB allows some variation to the actual amount of alcohol listed on the bottle. Due to the ageing process, the amount of alcohol can and does vary between the moment when a wine is analyzed for regulatory compliance, and its final transfer to bottle. That being said, TTB allows a greater degree of alcoholic strength variation if the wines are less than 14% ABV. The next time you purchase a US wine, take a look at the ABV – you may be surprised at the frequency with which wines are listed as 12.5% ABV. The reason for this is because many producers are trying to maximize the leeway in labeling that TTB grants wines that are lower in alcohol.

The fifth requirement is the volume of the container. By law, producers must use metric sizes for their bottles. Not only must producers use metric sizes, they can only use predefined metric sizes. These sizes are:

50 ml (1.7 fl. oz.)

100 ml (3.4 fl. oz.)

187 ml (6.3 fl. oz.) – Split or Demi

375 ml (12.7 fl. oz.) – Half-Bottle or Split

500 ml (16.9 fl. oz.) – Pint or Jennie

750 ml (25.4 fl. oz.) – Bottle or Fifth

1 liter (33.8 fl. oz.)

1.5 liters (50.7 fl. oz.) - Magnum

3 liters (101 fl. oz.) – Jeroboam or Double Magnum

If sizes are larger than 3 liters, they must be in whole liters (i.e., 4 liters, 5 liters, etc.) This creates a couple of difficulties for producers. The first is simple math: even though they must list their volumes in metric sizes, as seen previously, they must pay their excise taxes based on gallons produced. Another problem is faced primarily by foreign importers: some wines are traditionally produced in their home regions in non-standard metric sizes. A good example of this is Vin Jaune, a wine produced in the Jura region of France. It is normally produced in a 620ml bottle called a clavelin, because, as the story goes, that is the amount of wine remaining after 1 liter has aged for the required 6 year period. Due to this non-standard size, very little Vin Jaune is available in the US, because the bottle size is technically illegal. Don’t worry, if you brought back a bottle the last time you visited France, the Feds aren’t going to come banging on your door, but you aren’t going to find this stuff at the local liquor store.

The sixth requirement is a declaration of sulfites. Sulfites are sulphur-based compounds that are added in very small amounts to most wines in order to inhibit bacterial growth and oxidation. For the vast majority of people, these compounds are completely harmless. However, about 1% of the population has some sensitivity to sulphites. For this reason, all wines in the US must declare whether or not they contain sulphites. It’s practically impossible to avoid some amount of sulpher compounds being present in wines, since they occur naturally as a byproduct of fermentation. The practical reality is that all wines in the US are labeled as containing sulphites.

The final requirement is that all alcoholic beverages in the US must have a government health warning. The health warning is similar to the one printed on cigarette packs (both industries are regulated by TTB). The warning is printed in capital letters, and must be on every alcoholic beverage container in the US.

I know that was a long list to go through, but as I said in the beginning, in many ways this is the most straightforward type of wine label. Future posts will deal with labels from France and Germany, where the level of complexity goes up to another level.

To get a sneak peek of sample labels from other areas of the world, check out the wine label section of the EatingVine toolbox.