My Back-Label Dilemma Revisited – and Resolved!

Back in April this year (2012) I wrote a post about my back-label dilemma (here)

Before anything else, I’d like to thank Ryan Opaz, Hank Beckmeyer, Laura Gray and Arnold Waldstein, who all commented on that post and helped me with their input.

Basically, I was wondering exactly what (and how much) information to put on my next batch of back-labels, both from a practical and also from a legal point of view. And whether I should include what the wine does NOT contain and what was NOT done to it.

So, after much thinking over the last 7 months, here’s what I came up with for the back-label:

Well, as you can see, it’s a sort of compromise. I think the label itself provides quite a lot of general information, and it has a QR Code which leads to this page (here) where much, much more info is available for any potential customer who is thinking of buying the bottle.

Here’s a copy of it below, for your convenience, so you don’t even need to lift a finger to click through!
Mind you, I can't get the formatting to show correctly here, so maybe it's better if you do click through and see the page properly!!!

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QR Code Page

Thank you for scanning my QR Code and coming here. If you don’t find the information you’re looking for on this very page, it will probably be on another page of this same website.

Failing that, you can contact me directly anytime, by email (enestoslugares@gmail.com) or even by cell-phone (+34-687-050-010); but bear in mind that I live in Europe – so if you call me, please try not to wake me up in the middle of the night!

Below is the information that I would have liked to put on the back-label directly, but didn’t do so for several reasons: too much information to fit, probably not legal and maybe confusing or counter-productive to some people. But if you’re reading this, then you’re a wine-geek and so you won’t be confused!

I hope you enjoy my wine. That’s basically why I made it! I hope you liked the aromas and tastes, and I hope you found it interesting and complex and expressive of its terroir, and worth talking about.

The following information refers to the six (6) different wines imported into the USA in 2012 by José Pastor Selections:

1. Vinos Ambiz Airén 2011
2. Vinos Ambiz Malvar 2011 (Maceración Carbónica)
3. Vinos Ambiz Malvar 2011 (Orange)
4. Vinos Ambiz Malvar 2011 (Tinaja)
5. Vinos Ambiz Tempranillo Crianza 2010
6. Vinos Ambiz Titulciano 2010 (Temp, Graciano, Sirah)

These wines contain the following INGREDIENTS:

· Fermented grape juice

And they don’t contain the following additives:

· Industrial yeasts to give false and artificial tastes and aromas
· Industrial bacteria
· Industrial enzymes
· Colorants (like Mega Purple)
· Preservatives
· Flavour enhancers
· Added acids
· Added sugar, added fruit juice, added fruit extract
· Added water
· Wood chips
· Artificial tannins

These wines underwent the following PROCESSING:

I did these things:

· Crushed the grapes
· Pressed the grapes
· Racked the wine from one tank to another
· Clarified the wine using gravity, time and the cold of winter

And I didn’t do these things to them:

· Spray pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc onto the grapes
· Heat the wine up
· Cool the wine down
· Filter it
· Add any substances for clarifying or fining the wine
· Use reverse osmosis
· Use spinning cones
· Use cryo-extraction
· Use sterile filtration
· Use any other unnecessary terroir-masking intervention

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So what do you think?

Is there anything objectionable here? Illegal? False? Misleading? Is it helpful to consumers? Is it a good idea or a bad idea in general to do this?

I would really appreciate any sort of feedback.

And I haven’t actually sent the files to the printer’s yet, but they are ready to go, so I’m still in time to modify, if necessary!

And of course I can modify the QR landing page anytime.