Wine Label Design 101

What You Need to Know

Custom wine labels are extremely customizable. They can have a smooth and simple elegant look and feel to them. On the contrary they can be robust, lively, and full of color. These labels carry a lot of information, and you want to be sure to include everything required by law, and everything needed by potential buyers to induce them to purchase.

In general, this information should include:

1. Information required by law. This varies by country, but in the U.S. you’re going to need to include the Surgeon General’s Warning, wine’s approximate alcohol content, if it contains sulfites, and the size of the bottle, just to name a few.
2. The winery or wine maker, and if the wine is estate bottled (grapes were grown and harvested from the winery’s vineyards).
3. The vintage.
4. The variety.
5. The country or region where the grapes were grown.
6. The fun stuff! Where you can get descriptive about your wine and woo your customers into buying.
   

Wine labels can get to looking a bit crowded if you’re not careful. Really think about how you lay the information out on your label, and have several people look them over to see how they respond. Is it hard for them to see if it’s a cab or a syrah? Can they quickly locate where the wine is from? Does the label design grab them emotionally?

These custom labels are a mix of the required and the optional. It’s up to you to make it all play nicely in the sandbox together! Once you’ve decided on the best custom label for your wine bottles, we’d be ecstatic to get printing — reach out to us to get your project on the presses!