Bottling Information

Most wine labels should divulge where the wine was bottled. Common phrases for ‘bottled’ are mis en bouteille in French, imbottigliato in Italian, embotellado in Spanish, and engarrafado in Portuguese.

Wines bottled in the same place as they were vinified are described under château bottled, domaine bottled, estate bottled, erzeugerabfüllung, or gutsabfüllung, but wines without geographical indication may not be described as having been bottled at the domaine or château, for example, which last two terms are prohibited from their labels. If an address includes the name of a Protected Designation of Origin (see pdo), there are restrictions on the font size relative to that of any designation. Many of the wines bottled by an enterprise other than the one which made the wine are labelled relatively obliquely. Within the eu, the bottler’s post code is usually employed instead of a full postal address. This is one of those well-intentioned rules designed to minimize the possibility of passing off, but it does make labels less informative to those not conversant with, for example, French département numbers or the two letters used for each Italian province.