The Wine Lover: Labels give home wine a professional touch

The past couple of columns, I have focused on the theme of home winemaking and the best approaches for getting into the world of wine. Something I have been looking into for my own wine co-op is a label.
After we do a big bottling, I usually go home with about 25 cases of wine, and all the bottles look identical. On more than one occasion, I have had to open a bottle without any idea what is inside.
Going with the obvious solution, labels, I found out there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.
Last Wednesday, Irene George and Dennis Glover were kind enough to give me a tour of Landmark Label Inc., in Fremont. The company specializes in printing and sometimes designing wine-and-spirits labels. They make the wine labels for more than 700 wineries, including Rombauer, Chandon and even our local friends at Heart O’ The Mountain, Black Ridge and Windy Oaks.
For my purposes of printing a small run of labels, Irene suggested I use their digital printer. That might sound fairly basic, but their state-of-the-art digital printer actually costs upward of $200,000 — a far cry from the $50 printers we use at home!
The printer uses tiny dots to create the labels and insert the ink. Printers work on a resolution scale called dpi (dots per inch), which is comparable to the pixel scale of a digital camera. An average wine label will have 300 dpi.
The company uses different adhesive for red and white wines, too. White wines are often kept quite cool and put in cold water and ice to chill before serving. Have you ever tried to chill a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket and had the label come right off?
Landmark actually uses an extra-strong adhesive that doesn’t break down in cold water for white wine. Irene told me a story of a home winemaker whose children got into her white wine labels. The story ends with her hardwood floor covered in labels and extra-strength adhesive.
The conclusion of my explorations into labeling? I was surprised to find out you can have a short run of labels done for as little as $250. I think it’s a nice touch for any home winemaker and certainly essential for any looking to become bonded soon.
It’s also helpful for a messy guy who can’t seem to keep his cabernets and merlots separated. Cheers!
Austin Twohig is a certified sommelier and partner in The Santa Cruz Experience, which conducts winery tours in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Contact him at au****@th********************.com.