classicwines's Profile

How To Read a Wine Label - Classic Wines TV

You bring up an interesting issue, and I’m thrilled to be able to discuss this. Because unfortunately, wine terminology is often far fuzzier than it should be. In terms of the name on the front label, I consciously used “producer” because “brand” didn’t seem to be quite as accurate for what I was trying to convey. Whenever I travel to a wine region, almost without exception, the people involved in the crafting of wines refer to themselves as “producers.” I tend to think of “brands” more in terms of mass-market wines; Yellow Tail, for example, is a brand. Gallo is a brand. But, say, Dutton-Goldfield, a fabulous producer in Sonoma, is, to my mind, certainly not a brand, at least in the same way as those other two. I also tend to think of “brand” as the overarching company that perhaps owns the “producer”---though, occasionally, that brand will in fact be the producer itself. This is a matter of semantics, of course, as well as personal preference, but also one of how words affect consumers’ (and producers’) impressions of what they’re hopefully drinking with dinner every night. Of course, it’s an entirely different matter when the proprietary name of the wine is the only one featured on the front label, but that, too, is a different issue altogether. Also, not all American labels say “produced and bottled by.” Some say “vinted and bottled by.” Frustrating stuff--enough to make us want to drink!