What is the top thing you would like to see added to wine labels?
Total Acidity
pH
Acidulation (acid additions)
Chaptalization (sugar additions)
Water addition / watering back
Harvest date
Amount and type of oak
Type of yeast
Exact cepage (varietal composition)
Variety clone(s)
Vineyard source information (e.g. % from each vineyard)
Fining and filtering agents used
Amount of sulfites added
Robert Parker score
Wilfred Wong score
Other (please specify)
0voters
Aside from what is presently required to be on a wine label, what is the thing you would most like to see on the labels of wines you buy or consider buying?
I’m not really talking about whether the government should or shouldn’t require something else on labels as a matter of law, but really just what, as a consumer, would you be most interested in seeing on there, regardless of whether it is put there voluntarily, as a matter of custom, or as a legal requirement?
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that any such additional information would have to be reasonably honest and accurate.
I will admit that nothing on a label, sell/data sheet, etc, will ultimately tell me what my nose and tongue will. However, the actual grapes and the amounts used (whether 20% or 0.4%) might lend a little insight into the winemaking process, albeit a bit far-fetched.
If the vineyard(s) were included on everything, I would end up with more questions rather than fewer (soil composition, exposure direction and degree slope, etc)
Aren’t water additions for the most part illegal? Even if a little re-hydration improves the wine, no one is going to put that information on the label.
It’s illegal in Europe, though apparently it occurs some in some particularly hot/ripe vintages.
It’s legal in California in order to avoid stuck fermentations, which is not always exactly what it is used for (sometimes it is just to lower the alcohol in wines made from very ripe grapes). In any event, the State admits to that not being something they police at all, and at least some winemakers are forthright about the fact that they do it in order to avoid high alcohols.
Here’s a very good article about the practice, how and where it is used, and what the laws say.
A bar code to scan with my phone to take me to the type of information listed here. If you look at Kermit Lynch’s website about his producers, there is a ton of info. I’d love to scan that in a store & read up on the wine on my phone.
Taken by refractometer out in the field on the day of picking? Taken from a bin at crush? Taken after soak up? Taken by hydrometer or densiometer?
Plenty of ‘wiggle room’ here, and there already is - it’s always funny to see that someone picks at 24 and has a 13% alcohol wine and says that they do NOT add water . . .
I guess this doesn’t really answer the way the OP (never mind that it was me) phrased the question, but it would be interesting to know the overall picture of harvest, Brix and watering back. There is a significant difference between a 14% alcohol wine that was picked at whatever Brix results in that alcohol level, one picked at lower Brix but chaptalized, or one picked at a higher Brix but watered back.
And for those asking for the amount of type of oak, my guess is that you’re asking for French vs American versus Other country’s oak, correct? And ‘new’ versus ‘neutral’?
A couple of things:
To some winemakers, a 1 year old barrel might be considered ‘neutral’ but to others, the barrel has to have multiple uses before it would be considered ‘neutral’.
Toasting levels should be important as well?
And last but not lease, there should not be wiggle room regarding non-barrel oak ‘additives’ . . .
If I get to choose, I will take after soak up by hydrometer.
In my limited experience, I have small difference between refractometer in the field and crush bin by hydrometer. It’s generally half a brix so I agree that it makes a difference but having either one still gets me closer to what I really want to know than just the reported ABV.