EU Wine Labelling: What Must Be on the Bottle

Wine sold in the EU carries its information on two layers: the physical label on the bottle, and — since the ingredient and nutrition declaration became mandatory — an electronic label reached by a QR code. Knowing which layer each piece of information belongs to is most of the job.

This article is an orientation, not a substitute for the official texts. Details and enforcement differ by member state, so confirm the current requirements with your national wine authority before committing to a label print run.

The Regulatory Shape

EU wine labelling sits in the Common Market Organisation regulation for wine, amended by Regulation (EU) 2021/2117, which introduced the mandatory ingredient list and nutrition declaration for wine from December 2023. The general food-information rules — the allergen vocabulary, the format and order of the nutrition declaration — come from Regulation (EU) 1169/2011.

The fine detail of how the declaration must be presented sits in delegated and implementing acts that have been amended more than once since 2021. That is the part worth verifying against a current official source rather than a blog post, including this one.

What Must Appear on the Physical Label

The mandatory particulars for a still wine sold in the EU generally include:

• The sales denomination — the product category ("wine"), and the protected designation of origin or geographical indication where the wine qualifies for one and you are using it.
• Actual alcoholic strength by volume, expressed in % vol.
• Provenance — an indication of where the wine comes from, in the prescribed form.
• The bottler, and for imported wine, the importer established in the EU.
• Nominal volume.
• The allergen statement. "Contains sulphites" is effectively universal, because virtually all wine exceeds the declaration threshold — see understanding SO₂. Egg and milk residues from fining are declared where they may be present in the finished wine. Isinglass is the exception: fish gelatine or isinglass used as a fining agent in wine is specifically exempted from EU allergen labelling (Regulation 1169/2011, Annex II, on the back of an EFSA safety assessment) — though other markets treat it differently, so check before exporting. See fining agents.
• A lot identification allowing the batch to be traced.
• The energy value.
• Sugar content, for sparkling wine, expressed with the prescribed terms (brut nature, extra brut, brut, and so on).

Some of these have prescribed wording, minimum character heights, and rules about which particulars share the same field of vision. Those are exactly the details that get amended, and exactly the details that make a print run useless if you get them wrong.

The Energy Declaration

The energy value must appear on the physical label, not only behind the QR. It is given per 100 ml and — this is the part people miss — as a pair of units: kilojoules and kilocalories. Both. A label carrying only kcal is not compliant.

Wine energy comes overwhelmingly from ethanol, with a contribution from residual sugar and glycerol, so it can be computed from ABV and sugar content rather than requiring a lab. MakeWine derives the kJ/kcal pair for you from the wine's own records and shows you the exact physical-label lines to print.

What Can Move Behind the QR Code

The full ingredient list and the full nutrition declaration may be provided electronically instead of on the bottle, via a QR code — the entire reason wine QR codes went from marketing gimmick to compliance infrastructure. The allergen statement and the energy value stay on the physical label regardless.

Two constraints on that electronic page matter more than any other: it must contain only the required label information — no marketing, no promotion, no offers — and no user tracking or analytics. A bare-looking e-label page is not a design oversight; it is the requirement. Keep marketing, scan analytics and your provenance story on a separate page, reached by a separate QR if you want both on the back label. See wine QR codes for the mechanics: what to put on the page, size and contrast for printing, why the URL must be permanent, and how GS1 Digital Link fits in if you carry a GTIN.

Ingredients: What Counts and What Does Not

The declaration covers what is in the finished wine, not everything that passed through the cellar. In broad terms:

• Declared: grapes; additives that remain in the wine, such as sulphites, added acids, and sweetening; and enrichment sugar where used.
• Generally not declared: processing aids — yeast, nutrients, enzymes, and most fining agents — because they are removed or exhausted. But allergenic residues are declared where they may remain.

The practical consequence sits upstream of labelling entirely: your declaration is only as good as your additions log. Every SO₂ addition, acid correction, nutrient stage and fining trial recorded during the year is what makes an accurate declaration a ten-minute job rather than a reconstruction from memory. MakeWine seeds the ingredient list from your additions log for exactly this reason — but you remain responsible for reviewing it before publishing.

Language

The information must be intelligible to the consumer in the market where the wine is sold, which in practice means the official language or languages of that market: France needs French, Poland Polish. For an e-label this is easier than for a printed label, because one page can serve every language — MakeWine's e-label pages carry the fixed regulatory terminology in all 24 official EU languages, so the declaration reads correctly wherever the bottle lands.

What You Must Not Say

Restrictions are as consequential as requirements.

Protected names are not yours to borrow. A PDO or PGI name may be used only by a wine meeting that appellation's rules. If your wine does not qualify — because of the varieties, the yields, the ageing or the blend — label it as what it is. Chianti Classico's history is the clearest illustration: when the appellation's rules of the day prevented producers making the wine they believed in, some left the appellation, labelled honestly as table wine, and let the quality make the argument. That is a better answer than compromising the wine, and a far better one than misdescribing it. See Chianti Classico.

Traditional and quality terms are regulated. Words such as riserva, classico or their equivalents carry defined meanings tied to specific appellations, and are not decorative.

No health claims. Alcoholic drinks cannot carry nutrition or health claims. Beyond that, nothing on the label may mislead about origin, composition, method of production or characteristics.

Vintage and variety claims come with minimum-content rules, which differ between the EU and other markets — check them before printing if you export.

Honest labelling is not merely the low-risk option. If you are selling small volumes as an unknown producer, the label is where your credibility starts, and a wine described precisely for what it is will outlast one dressed up as something it is not. See bottling and closure comparison for the remaining packaging decisions.