Wine Sediments

In this age of personalized, multimedia website extravaganzas, a low-tech yet fascinating site caught my eye a few months ago. Although lacking a snappy title, Hundreds of nice wine labels from the whole world is definitely worth at least one visit, and probably many. The rather mysterious site, apparently created in Switzerland by “winegirl”, exists in six languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. It presents a huge collection of wine labels, organized around themes - so you can take a gander at labels depicting everything from pigs to poppies.

Its “twin site,” 200 Years of Wines of the World, claims to focus more “on the diversity of wines than on the diversity of labels,” but also presents an amazing array of labels, organized by country rather than theme. With a geographical and historical perspective, “200 Years…” features 2 labels per country per 50 year period. “No effort was made to choose the nicest labels…we are prepared to be criticized for our choice,” writes…who exactly? “Wineman”, also based in Switzerland.

According to “wineman” there are around a billion different wine labels in the world, and the twin sites represent some of the owners’ current collection of 235,842 labels. Anyone wishing to explore the subject further will also find links to about 50 other wine label Websites on “200 Years…”

To conclude with an example of cyber-serendipity, the site’s “Label of the Month” (above) is for a Vin de Pays des Côtes du Tarn, produced less than 60 miles from this writer’s home. It’s a small world after all.