It seems that no matter what label requirements are to come,
the wine industry has an educational task in its future.
By Jeff Siegel
Consumers have definite opinions about what they want to see on wine nutrition and ingredient labels, but they don’t necessarily think that wine needs to include either.
That was one of the takeaways from a December 8, 2022, Wine Market Council (WMC) webinar, “What Consumers Think About Ingredient and Nutrition Labels on Wine.” The session detailed findings from a recent study, which surveyed 1,005 wine drinkers. Among the revelations, about half of respondents didn’t realize wine didn’t carry either label, and only one-third of that group said wine should have them. Meanwhile, only about one-third said ingredient labels were extremely or very influential in purchasing decisions. Just one-quarter said nutrition labels were influential.
Despite these lukewarm responses, many consumers wanted to know the alcoholic content of wine, whether wine had added sugars and other common ingredients, and details about wine’s nutritional content. Many wine drinkers had less than favorable opinions about common wine additives, including sulfur, tartaric acid and tannins, when they saw such items listed as ingredients.
A raft of contradictions
In other words, there’s no clear consensus for the wine industry as it decides how to respond to the Treasury Department’s Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) moves forward with the process to add ingredient, nutritional and allergen labels over the next year. “We had a really strong opinion that we needed to look at this,” WMC President Dale Stratton told the webinar audience. “What role did we need to play to get a consensus view for the industry?”
The study, conducted this fall, included half of what the council calls “core” wine drinkers (who drink wine more than once per week) and half “moderate” wine drinkers (less than once per week). Of those, 60 percent were women, one-half were college graduates and the group was split about evenly between three age groups: 21-39, 40-59, and 60+.
Justin McGuirk, senior counsel for the Wine Institute, recounted the tangled, 17-year history of wine label rulemaking in the United States, noting that the TTB will be watching how the European Union decides to implement its label program over the next year. The deadline for wine sold in the EU to include labels — including U.S. imports — is Dec. 8, 2023.
Jeannie Bremer, vice president of compliance and public policy for The Wine Group, told the audience that among the biggest challenges the TTB will face is defining the difference between a processing aid (which doesn’t appear in the final product) and ingredients (which do) — and whether some processing aids should be included in ingredient lists. The TTB might take guidance from the way the Food and Drug Administration addresses the question for products like fruit juice, which tends to lean toward ingredients only.
Bremer added that the TTB has decided to let producers use third-party tools, such as Wine Institute’s Nutrition Information Calculator, to determine nutritional content (if and when that becomes required). That could save wineries $200 per label for testing. 
More findings
In all of this, said Christian Miller, the council’s director of research, there were a variety of responses from wine drinkers that seemed more than a little surprising…as well as some that were not surprising at all:
- Approval for using QR codes and a website to stand in for ingredient or nutritional labels on bottles split across generational lines. Almost half of those ages 21-39 said the codes were extremely or very satisfactory, while almost two-thirds of those 60 and older said the codes were slightly or not at all satisfactory.
- Wine drinkers, though they were aware that wine typically had fewer ingredients than hard seltzers and RTD cocktails, did seem to worry that wine was higher in sugar than it actually is. About one-half thought wine was higher in sugar than beer and hard seltzer. Not surprisingly, almost two-thirds felt positively about seeing sugar levels on a nutrition label. This was surprising, said Miller, who added that he wasn’t quite sure why wine drinkers thought wine contained so much sugar.
- Also intriguing: About 70% of the respondents said they had not seen nutritional labels, compared to about half for ingredient labels. As Miller, said, since almost no U.S. wine has currently carries those labels, the latter number seemed especially high. When asked why wine didn’t have nutrition labels, one-third said there were different laws for wine. Thankfully, only 10% said wine producers were trying to hide something, and only 6% said it was because wine was worse nutritionally.
It seems that no matter what label requirements are to come, the industry has an educational task in its future.
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Jeff Siegel
Jeff Siegel is an award-winning wine writer, as well as the co-founder and former president of Drink Local Wine, the first locavore wine movement. He has taught wine, beer, spirits, and beverage management at El Centro College and the Cordon Bleu in Dallas. He has written seven books, including “The Wine Curmudgeon’s Guide to Cheap Wine.”
