EU e-labels and export certificates

Wine sold in the EU must carry an ingredients and nutrition declaration, which may be provided electronically via a QR code (Regulation 2021/2117). MakeWine generates the e-label from the records you already keep. EU e-labels are free on every plan, including the free Cellar Hand tier — you can create and publish one without paying. Export certificates are a paid feature, available on the Compliance (€99/yr), Estate (€59/mo) and Winery plans.

Create an e-label

1. Open your wine's Wine Showcase, go to the Label & QR tab and choose the EU e-label card (or go directly to /wines/{id}/elabel). A draft is created automatically — reopening the page returns the same draft.
2. Check the product block: Product name, Producer, Country of origin, ABV %, Vol (ml) and Sugar g/100ml.
3. Energy auto-computes from ABV and sugars (7 kcal/g alcohol + 4 kcal/g sugars), shown per 100 ml in both kcal and kJ. Sugar defaults to a dry-wine assumption when you have no residual-sugar lab reading — verify it.

Review the ingredients

The ingredient list is seeded from the wine's additions log, so what you recorded during winemaking becomes the declaration. Sulphite additions (SO₂, Campden tablets) come through as “sulphites” with the allergen flag set automatically — allergens are displayed emphasised on the public page.

1. Edit each ingredient's name, category (Ingredient, Preservative, Acidity regulator and so on) and optional E-number.
2. Tick allergen where it applies. Processing aids (nutrients, enzymes, most fining agents) are excluded by law — but if you fined with egg, milk or fish products and residues may remain, add the allergen.
3. Reorder with the arrows, or press + Add ingredient for anything missing.
4. Press Save draft. You're responsible for the declaration's accuracy, so review it before publishing.

Publish

Press Publish e-label. The declaration goes live at /el/{token}, and a Back-label QR code section appears with the QR ready to download (.png or .jpg — plus a second GS1 Digital Link QR if you saved a GTIN). Put it on your back label, clearly separated from your provenance QR. Unpublish takes it down again.

The public e-label page is deliberately bare: no branding, no marketing, no analytics. That's not a missing feature — EU rules require the e-label page to be free of tracking and commercial content. Marketing and scan analytics live on the provenance page instead.

What a scanner actually sees

The public e-label page renders the fixed regulatory terminology — the ingredient categories, the nutrition headings, the allergen wording — in all 24 official EU languages, which Reg. (EU) 2026/471 requires. A visitor gets their own language automatically, picked from their browser's language settings, and there is a selector on the page if they want a different one. English is the fallback when nothing matches.

What is not translated is anything you typed yourself. A free-text ingredient you entered is shown exactly as you entered it, with a footnote saying so, rather than being machine-translated into something you never wrote and cannot check. Terms drawn from the built-in catalogue do get translated, because those we control.

Nothing about the language choice is stored — it is not a cookie, not a profile, and not tracked. The page carries no analytics or tracking script at all, which is deliberate: a bottle label that phones home about who scanned it is not something we are willing to ship.

Export certificates

For shipping abroad, Export Certificates (/export-certificates) prepares the paperwork for seven destinations: EU VI-1, USA TTB, Australia (Wine Australia), UK HMRC, China CNCA, Canada CFIA, plus a generic custom certificate.

1. Press + New Certificate and select the wine and (optionally) the fermentation lot.
2. Pick the target market.
3. Complete the certificate data — fields auto-fill from your wine and fermentation records, and empty required fields are highlighted in amber. Each market adds its own specific fields (COLA number, EORI, GACC and so on).
4. Press Save & Preview →, download a draft PDF to check, then Finalise Certificate to lock the record.

The PDF is generated from your saved data; submitting it to the relevant authority remains your responsibility.