Wine 101: Reading the label on that bottle

Walking into a major grocery’s wine section can be an intimidating experience. Rather than having a local winemaker on hand to answer questions and offer tastes, a shopper is faced with a wall of bottles, hundreds of rather obtuse labels with no wine adviser in sight. While European and other nations’ wines have more complex ‘rules,’ some basic information about American label design and required information will assist any shopper in making an appropriate purchase of domestic wines from among all those options.

Many bottles have both a back and front label. The front side contains the basic and federally-mandated information; the back label usually lists interesting facts and useful serving suggestions: sweetness levels, harvest parameters, vineyard data and / or winery history. Often th