Ingredients and nutrition on wine labels: the EU rules, explained

1. Which wines, and from when

The rules cover wine and the other grapevine products: sparkling, semi-sparkling and liqueur wines, de-alcoholised and partially de-alcoholised wines, and aromatised wine products such as vermouth or sangria. They apply to wine made in the EU and to imported wine alike, whenever it is sold to the final consumer, whatever the container.

They apply to wine produced from 8 December 2023. Wine produced before that date can still be sold with the labels of the time, until stocks are exhausted. A wine counts as produced once it meets the definition of its category: for a still wine, once fermentation has given it its alcohol and acidity. A sparkling wine made by second fermentation is only produced once that second fermentation is done; a base wine or cuvée made before the date does not make it exempt. Wine imported before the date counts as produced before it.

In France, the DGCCRF adds a practical point: buyers must be able to see this information before they buy. So it must also appear on gift boxes that group several bottles, and on online shops.

2. What stays on the bottle

You can print everything on the label, or put the ingredient list and the full nutrition declaration behind a code. If you use a code, three things must still be on the bottle:

“Same field of vision” means readable together without turning the bottle: the category of the wine, its designation of origin or geographical indication, alcohol, provenance, bottler and volume. These particulars, the energy value included, must be printed in characters at least 1.2 mm high, measured on the lowercase letters (the x-height).

Small bottles have two exceptions. If the largest face of the container is under 80 cm², the characters may be 0.9 mm high. Under 25 cm², a miniature for example, the nutrition declaration is not required at all.

About the code

• Any code a smartphone can read works: a QR code, another 2D code, an NFC chip. A website address printed on the label does not count: the code must take people straight to the information.
• There is no minimum size, but it must be easy to see and to scan, and nothing may hide or crowd it.
• The words next to it matter. The Commission says generic symbols such as an “i” do not tell consumers what they will find. If only one of the two items is online, say which: “Ingredients” or “Nutrition”.
• A common EU symbol is on the way. Regulation (EU) 2026/471 lets the Commission adopt one to replace these words, but none has been adopted yet (October 2026); the EU aims for the end of 2026. Until then, write the words: “Ingredients” and “Nutrition” next to the code.
• A sticker is possible only if it cannot easily come off, and it follows the same rules as a printed label.
• You may print other codes, a marketing one for instance, as long as the regulatory code is clearly identified and the others don’t confuse people or take space from the compulsory information.

3. The list of ingredients

The list starts with a heading containing the word “ingredients”. Ingredients come in descending order of weight at the time they were used; those under 2% of the finished wine can follow in any order.

The grapes

The single word “grapes” can stand for the grapes, crushed grapes and grape must you used. If you enriched the wine, “concentrated grape must” can cover both concentrated and rectified concentrated grape must. Sucrose is listed separately; it may also be called “sugar”.

Additives

Every additive goes in the list, named by its functional category and then its own name or E number: acidity regulator: tartaric acid, or acidity regulator (E 334). The categories and names to use are those of the EU’s list of oenological practices (Regulation 2019/934, Annex I, Part A, Table 2).

• Acidity regulators and stabilising agents that can replace each other may be written as “contains … and/or …”, with at most three of them, as long as at least one is in the wine.
• Packaging gases (nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon) can be replaced by “Bottled in a protective atmosphere” or “Bottling may happen in a protective atmosphere”. Then you don’t name the gases. You cannot list alternative gases.
• Tirage and expedition liqueur in sparkling wine can be written just like that, or followed by their ingredients in brackets.

What is left out

Processing aids are not ingredients, so they are not listed: yeasts and their derivatives, for instance, and fining agents that don’t stay in the wine. Two exceptions: yeast mannoproteins are an additive and must be listed, and any processing aid that can cause allergies and remains in the wine, even altered, must be named.

Allergens

In the list, allergens stand out from the rest, in bold for example. Use the official terms: sulphites, sulfites or sulphur dioxide; egg, egg protein, egg product, egg lysozyme or egg albumin; milk, milk products, milk casein or milk protein. Each language has its own fixed terms.

When the list is online, the label shows the allergens with “Contains”. When the list is on the label, the allergens appear only in it, not again with “Contains”. The only repetition allowed is the official pictogram.

4. The nutrition declaration

The declaration gives average values per 100 ml, in this order, and online always as a table:

Fat, saturates, protein and salt are negligible in wine. Instead of their zero lines, you may write Contains negligible amounts of fat, saturates, protein and salt. Otherwise every line is shown, zeros included.

Where the values come from

The values can come from your own analysis, from the known values of what you used, or from generally established data. They describe the wine as sold, and should be honest averages, not chosen at the edge of what the tolerances would allow.

Calculating the energy

Energy is the sum of what each component brings, with the EU’s conversion factors:

The averages for glycerol and organic acids are those the DGCCRF accepts for French wine. For a dry wine at 13.5% vol with 2 g/L of sugar: 13.5 × 0.789 × 29 + 0.2 × 17 + 0.7 × 10 + 0.6 × 13 = 327 kJ, and the same with the kcal factors, 79 kcal.

For your own wine, the wine calorie calculator does the sum and gives the line for the bottle and the full declaration.

Forgetting glycerol and acids is a common mistake: it leaves out about 15 kJ (3.5 kcal) per 100 ml.

Carbohydrate is not just the sugar. EU rules count glycerol as a carbohydrate (it is a polyol) but not as a sugar. So with average glycerol, carbohydrate is the residual sugar plus 0.7 g per 100 ml, while “of which sugars” is the residual sugar alone.

So the label doesn’t change with every vintage, the DGCCRF also publishes average energy values by sugar category and alcohol range. A dry still wine between 12% and 15% vol, for example, can show 328 kJ / 79 kcal.

Rounding

Following the Commission’s guidance: energy to the nearest kJ and kcal; carbohydrate and sugars to 0.1 g below 10 g, and below 0.5 g they can be written “0 g” or “<0.5 g”.

5. The page behind the code

The regulation sets two conditions, and the Commission’s guidance explains them:

• No user data is collected or tracked. There is no exception, not even with consent: a cookie banner doesn’t make tracking allowed. The DGCCRF accepts aggregated, non-individual statistics.
• No sales or marketing information. The information must sit in a neutral setting that doesn’t push people to buy, directly (links to a shop or website, promotions, points of sale) or indirectly (design that adds visual or sound appeal, persuasive wording). The DGCCRF gives examples: no link to your commercial site, no description of the estate, no food and wine pairings.

And in practice:

• Not on your own website. The Commission considers that a producer’s website usually carries marketing, usually tracks visitors, and can be changed at any time.
• Straight to the information. Scanning opens the page at once: no form, no intermediate page, no advert first.
• One wine per code. Each code leads to one wine’s information; it can cover several batches of it. The DGCCRF also accepts one code for several vintages or wines whose ingredients and nutrition are identical.
• Online for the life of the wine. The page must stay reliable, stable and accurate at least as long as the wine can be expected to remain good to drink. That responsibility is the producer’s.

6. Languages

The wine regulation lets compulsory particulars appear in one or more of the EU’s official languages, and the words next to the code follow the same rule. In France, the DGCCRF expects the information to be understood by the consumer, with a translation into the language of the country where the wine is sold where needed.

In practice, if your wine is sold in several countries, the page behind the code should come in each of their languages, ideally choosing the reader’s on its own. The allergen terms have an official wording in each language.

7. What changes in 2027

Regulation (EU) 2026/471, part of the EU’s “wine package”, adjusts these rules from 19 September 2027.

• Wine made solely for export outside the EU no longer needs the list of ingredients or the nutrition declaration. The rules of the country it goes to still apply.
• De-alcoholised wines get new terms, replacing “de-alcoholised” and “partially de-alcoholised”. “Alcohol-free” is for 0.5% vol or less, with “0,0 %” as well at 0.05% vol or less. “Reduced alcohol” is for wines above 0.5% vol whose alcohol is at least 30% below the minimum of their category. Both must also say “produced by de-alcoholisation”. Bottles labelled the old way before 19 September 2027 can be sold until stocks run out.
• Each compulsory particular needs to appear only once on a given packaging.
• The common symbol for the code (see section 2) may be adopted before then.

8. Common mistakes

In a survey published in September 2025, the French consumer association CLCV checked the labels of 148 wines bought in shops. A fifth of those with a QR code had a problem. For 11 wines, the full information could not be reached at all: the code didn’t work, or an advert came first. These are the mistakes to avoid:

• Nothing, or only an “i”, next to the code.
• The energy value missing from the bottle, or outside the field of vision.
• Allergens missing from the bottle when the list is online.
• A code that leads to your homepage, a shop, or a page with the estate’s story.
• Analytics, cookies or a cookie banner on the page; a link shortener that records where each scan comes from or on which device.
• Energy calculated from alcohol and sugar only; carbohydrate equal to sugar.
• Yeasts listed as ingredients; yeast mannoproteins forgotten.
• Additives without their category.
• One code for wines whose ingredients differ.
• A code that stops working: an expired subscription, a deleted page, a changed web address.

9. Checklist

10. Choosing an e-label service

Most producers use a service for the page behind the code. On the pricing pages we checked in October 2026, most charged every year, from about €90 to €1,500 depending on the number of labels. Before choosing one, ours included, ask:

What happens to my codes if I stop paying?

Your bottles stay on shelves and in cellars for years. If the page goes away with the subscription, every bottle sold carries a code that no longer works, and the information is no longer available as the rules require. Look for this in the terms; if it isn’t there, ask in writing.

Is the price per year, per label, or both?

A new vintage with other ingredients needs its own e-label. Prices by number of labels grow every year.

Whose address is in the code?

If the code points to the provider’s domain, leaving them breaks your printed codes unless they redirect for you. A code on your own domain name stays yours.

Does the page track anything?

Scan a sample: there should be no cookie banner, no analytics, no link to sell.

Does it follow the reader’s language?

For every country you sell in.

How is the energy calculated?

Alcohol and sugar only is not enough.