If you're like the majority of people who know next to nothing about wine, you probably fall back on a popular but highly unscientific method for choosing a bottle: How pretty is the label?
But by being armed with just a minimum of knowledge, wine buyers can avoid taking a (possibly expensive) shot in the dark: As wine guru Patrick Cappiello of New York City restaurant Rebelle explains in this video for Playboy, a few simple lessons can help consumers easily decode wine labels.
For Old World wines, there are four criteria to help buyers narrow down a vast wine selection: region, appellation, producer, and vintage (New World wine labels sub grape varietal for appellation). And of course, if all this learning is really just harshing your buzz, there are plenty of wine apps out there that aim to make picking a bottle easier, such as WineGlass and Corkscrew.
• How to Decode a Wine Label to Help Make Wine Buying Easier [YouTube]