Cape Cod Pinot Grigio -
How to Read a Wine Label

Cape Cod Pinot Grigio

Here is a typical American label. For these labels, the key things are usually the name of the winery and the wine type. Often the wine type - "Chardonnay" or "Zinfandel" or so on - is the largest thing on the label, because this is the most important thing to many consumers. More and more winery names are becoming known, so this is slowly becoming a more key feature on US labels.

The year and state are also included, and region if appropriate, but only a few regions in the US have become well known. The Napa Valley in California would be one of these. You can generally not judge what a wine is made of or how it was made by the region, though, and those are usually described in more detail on the back of the bottle.

Labels in the US also have the "contains sulfites" entry, unless they were made with low sulfites - see the Sulfite Page for more details on this. They also have a standard warning about drinking and operating machinery. They show the percent alcohol and the volume of liquid. In general, American labels tend to present far more "factual" information than other countries' labels.

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