Some days ago I was in a wine shop with a frined of mine. She is not involved into the wine business so she took the opportunity to ask me how she could get usefull information from the wine labels to buy the right wine for her parties or some presents.

I did not know how to properly answer her. I mean in a few words without being technical or mentioning all the wine laws or somenthing like that! Also because laws change from nation to nations too!

Let’s remain in Italy anyway.

Wine labels are not that usefull generally: it is not (always) easy to distinguish the fantasy name from the winery/producer; somnetimes it is not even easy to deduce the grape: those info are generally obvious for people who work in the wine business they are absolutely not for those who do not!

A wide expert of wine used to say that, unless you are very very famous and so the name of your wine can be recognised all over the world, you firstly must clearly indicate your production area. I would add: basic consumer could have difficulties in recognizing that “famous” name too!

So the label, the one on the back of the bottle (which is the most important part!) can truly help! Please find here some info that, for example, could help a consumer:

• the production area (the province or the district, even the technical one) along with the italian region. Especially for foreign people, it could be useful to also give indications about the localization of that region (south, center, north of Italy): foreign people do not know each one of the 20 regions and they could not know where they are located!
• the grape(s) of course.
• a rough idea about the time you can keep that bottle (and maybe how): I know it is not easy, it depends on many different factors but basic consumers do not care about experimenting longevity and stuff like that! So: 2 is not 5 which is not 15 years!
•  something about (real!) food pairings or some characteristic without copy and paste some theorical stuff as I usually find.
• I have recently find a label which could be a good base to represent what I mean, a good axample at least in terms of the the structure. It is the cover image.

Any suggestion?