 Front or
Back?
Courtesy of
30 Second Wine Advisor
By Robin Garr
How can a round bottle have a front or a back? It's
the label, obviously, that determines which way the wine merchant
will display wine on the shelf.
But sometimes, in the wacky world of wine regulations, what you
and I would call the back label is legally the front.
How's that?
Let's turn to today's wine for an example. The colorful label
that's most likely turned to the fore in the retail environment
(pictured below) is simple, even spare. It contains the maker's
name, "Sartarelli," on a black band across the top. The main white
section of the label shows a small bunch of golden grapes and the
single word "Classico." And in tiny, almost indecipherable print at
lower left you'll find the vintage, "2000."
What kind of wine is this? Where's it from? To learn all this,
you'll have to turn the bottle around and look at the small print on
the other label (pictured at top). There you'll learn, with the help
of bifocals or a magnifying glass, that this is Verdicchio dei
Castelli di Jesi Classico, a white wine made by the Sartarelli
winery from Verdicchio grapes, mostly, in the central ("Classico")
region of Castelli di Jesi in Marche ("The Marches") on the Adriatic
coast of eastern Central Italy.
From the standpoint of the U.S. Treasury Department's Alcohol and
Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which recently assumed
regulatory authority over wine labels, both domestic and imported,
from the old Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), the
label that contains required legal information about a wine - the
region of origin, the grape variety where required, the percentage
of alcohol and so forth - is the "front" label. Logos, decorations
and art are irrelevant to the regulators, who don't really mind
which label is turned forward on the shelf. (Similar regulations
apply in just about every wine-producing nation.)
WEB LINKS: For just about everything you could ever want to know
about what's required on the label for wines approved for sale in
the U.S., see the government brochure "What the Wine Label Tells
You" (in Adobe Acrobat PDF format) at:
http://www.ttb.gov/pub/alctob_pub/p51901.pdf
Want to see the official form that wineries must use to request
federal approval for a wine label? This form, also Adobe Acrobat
format, is online at:
http://www.ttb.gov/forms/pdfs/f510031.pdf
For a simpler, consumer-oriented explanation of wine labels, with
examples from several wine-producing countries, see our Wine Label
Decoder,
http://www.wineloverspage.com/wines/labels.shtml
 SARTARELLI
2000 VERDICCHIO DEI CASTELLI DI JESI CLASSICO ($10.99)
Clear gold color, very pale. Warm, slightly oxidative white-wine
aromatics: Subtle beeswax, almonds and honey. Mouth-filling and ripe
flavors, white fruit and a hint of almond; snappy acidity in a long
finish, fine with food. U. S. importer: VIAS Imports Ltd., NYC.
(June 6, 2003)
FOOD MATCH: Fine with a simple Italian classic, fettuccine
with white clam sauce.
VALUE: Well above the mean for complexity and balance at
this price point.
WHEN TO DRINK: Good now, but its rather full body and ripe
flavors suggest that it won't suffer from a few more years in the
cellar.
WEB LINK: Sartarelli's Verdicchio Classico fact sheet
(Italian only
- the home-page links to English and German pages return errors) is
online here:
http://www.sartarelli.it/prodotti/classico.htm
Curiously, you'll notice that the winery's Italian label,
although stylistically similar to its U.S. label, contains all the
front and back information in a single, wrap-around format. |
