9 Words To Avoid On Your Wine Labels
Wine Label Tips
How did you design your wine labels?
Did you hire a professional graphics artist? Or maybe you did it yourself?
Which ever you choose, you might want to avoid these 9 words on your custom wine labels, according to Winemag.
- Handcrafted – This wine terminology means nothing. Because every wine is handcrafted, so a certain point. Have you ever seen a wine label that says ‘machine crafted’?
- Reserve – Also known as ‘Barrel select” or “winemakers selection”, which imply premium quality. But outside of Spain and Italy, it really offers no specifics and is also unregulated by the FDA in America. I’ve had dreadful “reserve” wines selling for $10 or less that made me wonder what the non-reserve wines were like, Says Winemag.
- Noble – This word is often found on the wine description about their grapes. Some grapes like Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon may be considered ‘Noble grapes’ by some, and may taste be delicious tasting fruits, they are not noble. They are just fruit at the end of the day.
- Bold – Wineries like to trumpet their wine flavors, Again this means nothing. Have you ever seen a wine company brag about dull flavors?
- Finest – All superlative words like best, premium, and select are full of hot hair and waste important label printing space.
- World Class – Who decided if the wine is world class or is not? This is also full of hot air. There is currently no ‘world class’ wine awards.
- Award Winning – There is hundreds, and thousands of wine competitions around the world. Some wineries put all their marketing dollars into wine awards and wine tasting competitions, as they know it can bring them medals and awards. The best wineries almost never enter these competitions. A wine tasting room covered with awards and medals that no one has heard of probably doesn’t hold much importance or authenticity.
- Dream - (Family Owned & operated) – The aspirational family wine business, family owned and operated. This has nothing to do with taste.
- Passion – Being passionate about winemaking is a personal decision, this word ‘passion’ or ‘passionate’ speaks to the owner and not the customer.
Words To Add To Your Wine Labels
Some of the words you WILL want to put on your wine label are: Defined terms. If the wine says it is a ‘reserve’ or ‘old wine’ it should explain that clearly and why. Eco friendly packaging or vineyard, Green farming is a great benefit to the world by reducing waste, carbon and pollution.
Look for the grape variety and alcohol content, these are required by land and should be easily found on the wine label. Winemakers should also not hide their sources of the grapes, unless it is on a super large commercial scale.
Who Is the Winemaker?
Telling the consumers where the grapes came from can be a great marketing tool. If the wine bottle also has information about the winemaker, this is also good. Winemakers are the celebrities of wine, so if the wine label advertises the winemaker, this is another good sign.
Misspelled Words On Wine Labels
Also make sure the words are spelled right on the wine label, words like Reisling should be spelled Riesling. Terroir, not Terrior. Chehalem, not Chahalem. These misspelled words on wines happen more than you think. It also makes the winery look carless in the best case, and ignorant in the worst case.
This sums it up for the top 9 words to avoid putting on your wine labels.
Do you have any more suggestions or something we forgot? Contact us and let us know!
