Extreme Wine-Label Decoding
The front label is a mysterious vertical strip—a stack of various-size color blocks, mostly green, yellowish, trailing into purple. That’s all she wrote. But the minds behind Uproot wine are betting that we’ll gain something from the colors on the front strip—a taste impression, in fact.
The front label is a mysterious vertical strip—a stack of various-size color blocks, mostly green, yellowish, trailing into purple. That’s all she wrote. Which is to say, there’s no writing on the label at all. Not only has the wine’s brand name gone missing, but also the variety. Spot this bottle on a wine-shop shelf and you won’t even know what kind of wine is inside.
Turn the bottle around, of course, and there it all is: “Uproot Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley 2011 14.5% ALC BY VOL,” etc. Legally, the back label is acting as the front label (very common in this day of artistic labeling). But the minds behind Uproot are betting that we’ll gain something from the colors on the front strip—a taste impression, in fact. They’ve developed a color-coded “flavor palette,” so each of those blocks reveals a flavor in this Sauvignon Blanc: melon, fresh-cut grass, citrus, grapefruit, passion fruit. And the size of the block corresponds to how dominant that flavor is. High-level information, as it turns out!
