Wine Shopping by Label

Triple digits temperatures mean it's time to break open the wine before it goes off and start shopping for replacement bottles. I admit to being a label snob about wine. It might seem pointless to be a label snob about wine, but it makes sense. The label is the first signifier towards what the wine is all about. it's the first thing you see when serving a bottle of wine or presenting a bottle to guests. Label wine buying can be a secret pleasure considering the nice assortment of wines out there. Print this page and find the cool wine labels in your nearest store.

Wine label design is part of a larger concept of marketing that has not gone unnoticed by the recent spate of wine products in the markets. But for those without custom wine refrigerators or fur lined bottle openers, the luxury of consuming a bottle of wine at home or at a party remains the novelty of the label. Wine labels can spark stories or spur the party quipster to make jokes. Just a plain label with some grapes or a ribbon of color doesn't get the job done for wine labels anymore.

Wine label art has influenced marketing and vice versa for the past few centuries. Just as a winery might elect to use the paintings or imagery of a certain artists to suggest a certain era or nationality, so might a vintner commission an artist to create a unique visual signature for their wine. The Impressionist illustrations of Parisian cafe's or turn of the century Europe might be carved into a label. The bell tower, or campanile, adorns many different vintner's or bottling company's vintages of wine.

The wine labels might be a set of abstract art drawings meant to distinguish the brands in the sea of similar looking bottles. Almost all the merlot and cabernet sauvignon is colored the same dark glass color, and the white zinfandel glass bottles look similar too. Hence the need for a wine label to distinguish the brand more. Or the wine label might have a graphic that complements the label name or wine type. Sometimes, like in the case of Cardinal Zin, the label seems to exploit a name or statement. Cardinal Zin is banned in Ohio, on the basis of its label alone.

Cardinal Zin and Toasted Head wine labels encourage consumption?

Credit: suzanne

Copyright: suzanne