Wine labels 101

Looking for the right Finger Lakes wine? Know your way around the label

How can you tell if your favorite Finger Lakes wine is made with Finger Lakes grapes? Just read the label!

JEFF RICHARDS/Star-Gazette Important details on the Bully Hill Vineyards' Love My Goat Red Wine label are: 1.) The whimsical goat illustration. 2.) The name of the wine (Love My Goat). 3.) It is a 100 percent blend of New York State Red Wine. 4.) "Produced and Bottled by" means Bully Hill fermented at least 75 percent of the wine

Wine labels provide a ton of information, if you know where to look. The design of a wine label is up to the individual winery, but federal regulations say that certain information must be included on every label.

Labels actually must be approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau before being placed on a bottle.

First, you need a brand name, which usually is the name of the producer (for example, Standing Stone Vineyards). It also is mandatory to have the name and address of the bottler, which may or may not match the name of the winery.

Since December 1987, all labels also must advise consumers that the wine contains sulfites, even if sulfites were not used during production.

Sulfites, naturally occurring compounds that prevent microbial growth, are found on grapes, onions, garlic and many other growing plants. Some people are allergic to sulfites and the compounds can cause severe headaches.

According to the New York Wine Course and Reference, produced by the New York Grape and Wine Foundation, wine contains sulfites as a natural by-product of fermentation.

Finally, each bottle must also contain a health warning about the possible hazards of alcohol.

Now it gets a little trickier. Additional information on the label will tell you the source of the grapes and who processed the wine, among other things.

For example, to be labeled "Estate Bottled," the wine production must be in the same county as the grapes that are used and those grapes must be grown under the control of the vintner.

"Grown, Produced and Bottled by" shows that the winery controlled 100 percent of the process, from vineyard to bottling. However, "Produced and Bottled by" may be used if the bottler fermented at least 75 percent of the wine. If the bottler fermented at least 10 percent, they can still use the label "Made and Bottled by."

Finally, a winemaker who has done blending, aging or otherwise treated the wine to improve it, may use "Cellared and Bottled by."

To label a wine as a varietal, such as Riesling or cabernet franc, there must be at least 75 percent of that particular grape in the wine. The wine also must have the flavor and taste of that grape varietal.

Some wines have a vintage listed on the label, and some do not. The vintage indicates that at least 95 percent of the grapes used were grown in that particular year.

If you want to give a friend a wine made with Finger Lakes grapes, you need to check the viticultural area designation on the label. There are eight federally recognized wine regions in New York state (compared with more than 100 in California). They are: Lake Erie; Finger Lakes; Hudson River Region; Long Island; The Hamptons, Long Island; The North Fork of Long Island; Cayuga Lake; and Seneca Lake (added in 2003).

It's interesting that the Long Island region has two subdivisions, and so does the Finger Lakes region.

For a wine to be labeled with one of these regions, 85 percent of the grapes in it must be from that region. For example, Knapp Vineyards' Cabernet Franc is not only from the Finger Lakes region, but more precisely it's from the Cayuga Lake region -- or at least 85 percent of the grapes used to make it are.

In contrast, if a label just says "New York," the wine probably is made of a mix of grapes from different New York grape-growing regions.

Bully Hill's very popular Love My Goat Red Wine is labeled as containing 100 percent New York state grapes -- but not necessarily from one particular region.

Finger Lakes wineries have learned how to make great wine using grapes from other parts of New York. As production increases, and growers cope with the harsh realities of Finger Lakes winters, wineries may have to draw on even more outside resources to continue producing great wines in the Finger Lakes.