SO LITTLE SPACE, SO MUCH INFORMATION
What should wine labels tell the consumer? Tasting notes and serving details a start
I was checking out my local SAQ recently and came across an Australian wine from the Angove Family winery. Aside from the fact that the wine was made with carignan, one of my favourite grapes, what struck me was the information on the front label.
Yes, it was colourful, which might turn off the classicists. But it included everything you would want to know about the wine: the grape used, the region, descriptors as to how the wine tastes.
I have long been an advocate for more informative wine labels. It’s very poetic to ramble on about rolling fields of vines and how attentive the pickers were, harvesting each grape when it had ripened to perfection. (That’s what they should be doing, anyway.) But wine is a complicated beverage, and wineries should be using the limited space available to help educate the consumer on what’s going on inside the bottle.
This can be done either on the back or front label. I liked what Angove did, because it gave the consumer who might not be familiar with carignan a true sense of what they were buying.
So, what information should be available to the consumer? By law, wine labels must include the size of the bottle and the alcohol level. And they must have a warning that the wine contains sulphites (which all wines do).
I had a heated discussion with a friend about whether European wines should list the grapes used on the front labels. The European thinking is that, above all else, wine is supposed to reflect where the grapes were grown. For those producers, the grape varieties are simply used to express the place, or a specific terroir.
So a Chablis is a Chablis first, and a Chardonnay second. I agree with this in principle. But I also agree that while Chablis is a very unique expression of Chardonnay, the grape should be listed somewhere on the bottle.
For regions that always use blends, the grapes should also be listed (like I do in every tasting note I publish). I like the idea of a simple tasting note as well. Beyond that, offering up a few ideas for food pairings would be very useful. Listing the serving temperature and whether the wine should be decanted would be worthwhile.
I would also appreciate knowing residual sugar levels. This is more of a health issue than sulphites, but governments seem hesitant to force the alcohol industry to reveal caloric intake. Hopefully this will happen soon, but in the meantime, simply knowing what a wine tastes like, and how best to serve it, would be a step in the right direction.