When you decide to buy wine and head to the wine section, you'll find countless labels lined up before you. If you've already decided which bottle to buy, that's one thing, but if not, how do you make your choice?
Country, region, vineyard, grape variety, producer—there are various filtering criteria to help you select the bottle you want from the many options available. If the store offers tastings, you can actually sample the wine and confirm the taste before deciding. However, you're not always making such careful selections, are you?
There's one way of choosing wine that probably everyone has experienced at least once: buying based on the label design alone.
Buying based on the label—intuitively selecting from numerous bottles based on the label or overall appearance that appeals to you. The bottles you choose vary depending on your usual preferences and mood at the moment. Yet despite this somewhat casual approach, when you actually drink the wine, it's surprisingly often to your taste, and you rarely find yourself disappointed.
Let's explore why wines purchased based on label appeal turn out to be unexpectedly good.
The Taste of Wine is the Taste of the Label
Numerous studies conducted over the years have proven that evaluation of wine is highly unstable and uncertain. These characteristics are sometimes exploited and used as wine sales techniques.
Storytelling, in particular, is an effective method—wines that received low ratings and showed no purchase intent can even become objects of active purchase when this technique is employed.
It may seem obvious, but no matter how impressively a wine's story is told, the actual taste of the wine in the bottle doesn't change. Nevertheless, by hearing a story, we genuinely feel that the taste of the wine, or at least the impression we receive from it, has changed.
Such storytelling doesn't only come from wine shop salespeople, restaurant sommeliers, or producers standing at booths at events. Opportunities to encounter stories are everywhere—on social media, in conversations with friends, in books and manga.
And the very first of all these opportunities is the label affixed to the bottle.
From labels that casually enter our field of vision, we receive far more information than we realize. Moreover, this information contains more emotional elements than the logical content written on the back label.
We sometimes drink the label and taste the label itself.
Favorite Labels Loosen Both Taste Buds and Purse Strings
When purchasing wine, more than 70% of people haven't clearly decided which bottle to buy until they arrive at the store's display area. Furthermore, over 80% of these people decide which bottle to purchase based on the label and their preference for it. Overall, about 60% of people buy wine based on label appeal.
Extensive research and studies have been conducted on wine purchasing behavior.
Past research has reported that when French music was playing in the wine section, people were more likely to buy French wine, and when German music was playing, they were more likely to buy German wine. Wine purchasing behavior is that unstable and easily influenced by the atmosphere of the place.
Among the influences from outside the bottle—factors other than what's more essentially inside the bottle—labels are considered to have a particularly strong impact. Previous experiments have revealed that labels affect consumers in various ways.
Labels not only encourage purchases based on appearance but also raise the amount drinkers are willing to pay for the wine and even change their evaluation of the wine itself.
The Influence of Labels Was Not Simple
Everyone dislikes having their favorites criticized. The more you like something, the more naturally you want to rate it highly. After all, something becomes a favorite precisely because you like it and rate it highly.
Similarly, it's difficult to accept that the contents of a bottle you purchased because you liked the label—even if only somewhat—turned out to be disappointing. As the saying goes, "love is blind"—when you like something, even flaws can appear as virtues.
Likewise, if you're paying the same amount, you'd choose what you like better; if choosing between something you like and something you don't, you'd buy what you like even if it costs a bit more. These are all natural behaviors. Research shows this tendency is more pronounced with wine.
However, such influence is quite simple—it's merely showing slight favoritism toward your preference. Yet the actual influence that labels possess didn't stop at this level.
Nor was it simply a matter of affixing a luxurious label to make a bottle appear premium and consequently sell at a higher price.
The Overlooked Quality of Labels
First, the way labels affixed to the outside of bottles influence the wine contained inside the bottles is complex.
Labels tend to be thought of as visual elements. This leads to an assumption that visual impression is most important. Simply put, this is the approach of using more luxurious labels for more expensive bottles.
Certainly, impressions entering through the eyes somewhat determine the overall impression of the object. In that sense, competing on appearance isn't necessarily wrong. However, more detailed studies revealed that the influence of such simple visual appeal has almost no effect. More precisely, the quality of the label itself had no influence.
There are case studies where identical wine was placed in bottles with different labels to examine how evaluation of the wine changed.
The results obtained from these studies were as follows: The quality of paper used for the label, print quality, color, shape, size, and individual evaluations of the depicted content did not affect wine evaluation. However, the overall evaluation of such labels—specifically, how much people liked them—did influence taste evaluation of the wine.
For example, suppose there's a label with a crown design embossed in gold foil on very high-quality paper. Suppose all subjects shown this label evaluated it as "luxurious and high-quality." This is the evaluation result for individual elements of the label.
Next, the subjects watch wine being poured into glasses from bottles bearing this same label, and are questioned about the taste, their willingness to purchase the bottle, and how much they'd be willing to pay. At this point, subjects who liked the label itself felt the wine tasted better, wanted to purchase the bottle more, and were willing to pay more money for it. On the other hand, subjects who found the label luxurious and high-quality but didn't personally like it showed no such inclination whatsoever.
Subjects who clearly disliked the label rated the wine's taste lower, showed no purchase intent, and responded that if they were to buy it, the price would have to be low. Even though they evaluated the label itself, that evaluation wasn't reflected in their wine evaluation.
These results demonstrated that the influence of labels depends not on the individual elements composing the label, but entirely on whether each customer personally likes or dislikes it overall.
Labels Change the Taste of Wine
You might think that labels influencing purchasing behavior is simply because most wine is bought in environments where tasting isn't available. Since you don't know what's inside the bottle, naturally the impression from the knowable exterior has a stronger influence.
However, the power of the story told by labels was even stronger.
First, studies show a tendency for taste evaluations to be consistently higher for bottles with labels that people liked more. Conversely, when two types of wine that were judged to clearly differ in quality and value (bottle price) after viewing labels were re-evaluated blind, no significant difference appeared in the evaluation results. In other words, the two wines that were clearly judged different beforehand were judged to be the same.
Furthermore, when the same single type of wine was evaluated with multiple different labels attached, in most cases all evaluation results changed. This means that despite being the same wine except for the label, all the wines were judged to be different. This tendency remains unchanged whether the subjects are general consumers or professional tasters.
Recent research has conducted even more advanced studies. It has shown the possibility that not the preference for labels, but specific elements of labels are concretely influencing the taste of wine.
This is completely different from previous discussions. Previously, it was that because people liked the label, they showed favoritism toward the taste and impression of the wine. However, this suggests that the actual taste perceived from the wine changes.
Buying Based on Labels Correctly Selects the Wine Taste You Want to Drink
This research hasn't yet completed full verification, and no final report has been issued. However, interim reports suggest that testing with labels excluding preference factors shows the possibility that some elements composing labels are concretely affecting taste perception.
For example, labels centered on warm color schemes show a strong tendency for higher sensory evaluation results regarding sweetness.
Of course, such influence from labels only works as an impression, but there's a possibility that this impression concretely affects taste perception and changes the evaluation of taste perceived from the wine. Conversely, this means people may be seeking the specific taste direction of the wine they want to drink in the label design.
In this case, so-called buying based on label appeal can be considered a rational way to choose wine, from one perspective. People who want to drink slightly sweet wine, even unconsciously, are likely to choose bottles with labels that convey such a taste impression.
Of course, labels affixed to bottles aren't necessarily designed with elements matching the wine's taste. However, the possibility isn't low that those creating labels, in many cases, make labels with designs aligned with the wine's impression and affix them to bottles. Here, the intentions of both parties align, consequently increasing the success rate of label-based purchases.
Labels affixed to bottles are extremely important presences for bottles that have left the maker's hands to assert themselves. Based on the idea that to be selected from numerous bottles lined up on store shelves requires standing out, sometimes uniqueness is sought in labels.
However, when such uniqueness fails to correctly represent the bottle's contents, the outcome of purchases based on that uniqueness is very unfortunate. The same applies when labels express only the maker's thoughts in an overly prominent way.
It's long been said that people seek information in wine's taste, but this apparently applies to more immediate purchasing behavior as well. Makers need to learn how to correctly respond to the more instinctive act of buying based on label appeal.
