Reading the back
The back label and the bottler
At the very bottom of the back label often sits the most honest line on the entire bottle: who actually bottled it. Anyone who can read this single line can tell at a glance whether a wine comes from its own estate or merely carries a label.
Who really made the wine
Three different names can appear on a label, and they by no means mean the same thing. There's the producer, who grew the grapes, and the bottler, who sealed the finished bottle. With imported wine, there's also the importer, who brought the wine into a new country in the first place. In many cases this is the same company, but it certainly doesn't have to be, especially with larger brands operating multiple sites.
Large retail chains often buy finished wine in bulk tanks from various producers at once. It's then bottled under their own label at a contracted facility. Legally, this is entirely permissible. The only requirement is that the mandatory bottler information is accurate and the actual operating company is correctly named. For the buyer, though, this means the appealing name on the label reveals little about where the grapes actually came from. It's merely the seller's brand, not the name of the vineyard the grapes originally came from.
Estate bottling or bottling for a third party
In Germany, the terms Erzeugerabfüllung or Gutsabfüllung (estate bottling) make one thing clear: the winery grew its own grapes and bottled them in its own cellar, without blending in outside fruit. If the label instead simply reads "abgefüllt für" (bottled for), the wine belongs to a client, often a supermarket chain or wine merchant, who has outsourced the actual production entirely to another facility.
Other countries have very similar phrasing. France writes "Mis en bouteille au château" or "à la propriété" for estate bottling, but "mis en bouteille par" for bottling carried out by a trading company. Italy uses "imbottigliato all'origine" for estate bottling. It simply says "imbottigliato da" when a different facility bottled the wine instead. Once you've learned these few words, you can recognize them on labels from half of Europe, even without speaking the local language. A single glance at that small line at the bottom is usually all it takes.
What else can appear on the back label
Beyond the mandatory information, many producers use the back label for optional extras. These include a recommended serving temperature, food pairing suggestions, or brief tasting notes mentioning aromas like citrus or dark berry. These details are entirely optional. Yet they often help more when shopping than the dry mandatory list on the front, because they directly answer what the bottle is actually good for.
Since the reform of December 2023, more and more back labels now feature a small QR code as well. It links to the full ingredient list and nutritional table online. Anyone who wants to can scan this code right in the shop and read in seconds what would otherwise only exist in a database somewhere online. Printed on the cramped space of a back label, that much detail would hardly be possible.
Reading the whole label as one document
At the end of this journey through mandatory information, vintages, origin systems, and sweetness levels, it's worth taking one last, practical look at the whole bottle. A label isn't an advertising poster, but a legal document with a built-in advertising space on top. The front usually carries the sales-boosting words, while the back holds the sober facts about bottler, alcohol, origin, and ingredients.
Anyone who reads both sides together understands a bottle in seconds better than someone relying solely on an attractive label design. If you're ever unsure while shopping, you can simply snap a photo of the bottle with your phone. An app like Gustofolio will then show you what the individual words mean and where the wine actually comes from, complete with producer, bottler, and vintage at a glance. That way, a shelf full of similar-looking bottles turns back into a row of wines each with its own readable story. Every bottle carries its own producer, its own vintage, and its own origin.