Matthew Latkiewicz Wine Label Wheel from Sloshed.com

When creating a wine label, a designer’s first hurdle is the government: a label needs to include the producer, where the wine is from, what kind of wine it is (what grapes? a blend? sparkling?), the amount of alcohol in the wine, and that lovely little warning from the Surgeon General. The next hurdle is a little less straightforward: dealing with the fact that most people are buying wine based upon label alone, because they don’t know the fascinating story about who made the wine and how it should taste.

At first, this sounds fantastic. Just make that label stand out on the shelf, and out of the store it will fly.  But in fact, this customer tendency is what makes wine label design particularly interesting.  Not only must a wine label stand out and look great on a shelf, bar, and website, but the wine label’s design has to really speak to the wine that is in the bottle.  Chuck House explains this perfectly for Food & Wine:

“A wine label is all about getting someone to ask a question. A great label should stimulate a conversation… It could be a conversation between you and the bottle… But most importantly, the label has to suit the wine. The wine has to be at home in the bottle.”

As a label-driven consumer, however, this puts you in an interesting place where you need to ask yourself “if letterpress were a Merlot, would I want to drink it?”  Matthew Latkiewicz put together a hilarious ‘Wine Label Wheel’ to illustrate quite cleverly just how winemakers and designers are interpreting the juice that’s making it into those bottles.  Who wants a glass of Pottery Barn Catalogue Chardonnay? A leaping animal Aussie blend?

All joking aside, here at Noise 13 we take our wine (and wine labels) very seriously.  So, drink the wine you like. Buy the wine that looks good. And appreciate that vintage poster label accurately capturing the dusty, terroir-driven, oak-aged Willamette Valley Pinot Noir in your glass.