How do you read a wine label?
About this video
Four clues on any bottle — region, grape, vintage, alcohol — and what each one actually tells you about how the wine will taste. Enough to choose in a shop aisle without guessing.
Transcript
Stop guessing at wine labels — read them in twenty seconds. Look for four clues. Region tells you the style tradition. Grape tells you the flavour family. Vintage tells you the year the grapes were picked, not when it was bottled. Alcohol gives the weight: lower feels lighter, higher feels richer. If the grape is missing, the region is probably the clue.
Who answered this
Written and approved by Jules Lamon, Dip WSET, on 26 September 2026. He is a working wine educator and no answer publishes until he has read it.
The words are his. The voice and the face on screen are synthetic, generated from his own recordings so he can answer more questions than filming allows.
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