Don’t judge a book by it’s cover..

It’s funny how we judge things, particularly when buying consumables. I haven’t got a degree in psychology so this won’t sound very intelligent but we tend to buy stuff that looks good. When you’re in the supermarket you pick the ripe bunch of grapes not the manky ones, right? If there’s a choice between a dented tin of baked beans and a pristine one, it’s fairly predictable that you’ll buy the latter, because it looks better.

But what about when it comes to wine, do we take the same approach? I’ll put my hands up and happily admit that for many years I bought wine purely because I thought the label was pretty, and on offer of course. This approach to wine meant that I would turn my nose up at a bottle that had a rubbish label (or the word Chardonnay on it, but that’s another kettle of fish).

Here are a couple of examples –

A fairly plain label right? Not particularly eye-catching? In fact it’s a fantastic wine, Chablis is pretty famous for producing unoaked Chardonnays and normally comes with a higher price. This one is £14.99. Yummy.

Now this one is a real head-turner, a very classy (!) picture of a fox on a shimmery gold leaf background. Unsurprisingly it costs £3.99.

The moral of this story is that label’s aesthetics have no relation to the wine itself, it’s what’s written that’s important.