If you want to start an argument among wine industry people, bring up the issue of nutritional labeling. Should wine labels provide consumers with the same kind of nutritional information and ingredient lists as found on most other food and drink items? Stand back!

The Soviet System

There is an old joke that everything in Stalin’s Soviet Union was either mandatory or forbidden and sometimes it seems like that’s the logic behind wine label regulations.

All wines in the U.S. market already have some required information on the label, but thi smainly  takes the form of warnings. Beware of alcohol! This product contains sulfites (without any explanation of what this is and why it might be a useful thing).  Negative labeling is required, but FDA-standard nutritional information is not.

Some wineries already provide nutritional information. Some do it because they believe consumers seek transparency in wine as in the other products they buy. Some do it to differentiate their products.

Stella Rosa wines, which are incredibly popular, are the exception to the rule. They do have nutritional labels and they are required to have it. Stella Rosa wines have alcohol levels so low that they are regulated as both wine and also food. The back label of a Stella Rosa wine bottle is a glimpse of the future whether you like it or not. Note that the Stella Rosa label shown here includes sulfites in the list of ingredients, but it also explains its antibacterial function.

A Lot to Learn about Labels

Machiavelli advises us to do willingly that which we will otherwise be compelled to do. Although I don’t accept this as a universal rule, it pretty much sums up my position on the issue of nutritional labeling of wine here in the United States.

The program committee of the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium seems to have embraced the inevitability of wine labeling regulations. There were several sessions devoted to label regulations including the two I have reproduced below. Read the descriptions to get an idea of the topic and issues that were discussed.

Prepping for Nutrient and Ingredient Labeling.  The EU is changing its laws to require labels on all wines sold there to have nutritional and ingredient information. The US is exploring this option and potentially will follow suit in several years. What does this mean for you in terms of how you make wines and how you will need to label them?

This session will explore actual EU requirements and some recommended practices to best describe and comply with these regulations. We will also discuss managing your ingredient list and nutritional levels and how to message this information to your customers. Some people have already been doing this for decades and we will discuss their reasons for why they were early adapters and why and how they have managed this through winemaking and messaging over time.

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Labeling Requirements and Regulations. Join us for a two-part comprehensive session on labeling regulations and requirements in the wine industry. The first part of this session will focus on the intricacies of the California Bottle Bill, featuring insights from industry experts and regulators. The second part of this session will explore proposed and anticipated changes in federal labeling regulations and strategies for addressing these changes. Our panel of distinguished speakers will provide valuable insights, and you will leave with a clear understanding of upcoming changes and compliance deadlines.

My Machivellian view is that it is better to accept that the labels are coming (and are already here in the European Union) and try to shape them to best suit both consumer and producer needs rather than to fight an all-or-nothing losing battle. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems with labeling requirements.

Forest vs Trees

My issues with nutritional labels go beyond the wine category. I am a label reader. I want to know what’s in my food and drink and where it came from. But in the process of atomizing products into their parts, I think we have missed something important, which is a focus on the whole. Individual properties are important, especially to people with specific health issues, but the overall characteristics of foods and diets more generally are important, too. And the forest gets lost when we focus so tightly on trees.

This was not always the case. One of the factors that drove wine’s Golden Age, for example, was the French Paradox, which argued that wine was a vital part of a healthy diet and lifestyle. A healthy diet, like a good wine, is about balance.

You might not be able to exactly say that wine was good for you, but like this Wine Spectator cover, you could argue that a diet that includes moderate wine consumption is healthy for many people.

Two cheers for nutritional labels for wine. They are coming and we need to make the best of the situation. Many consumers will find that wine isn’t as unhealthy as they think. But there is much off-label work to do to get wine’s positive message back on the public radar screen.