How to Make Your Own Wine Label

If you’re making wine regularly you’re going to need your own wine label. Not only does it look good but it also helps you distinguish one kind of wine from another. You could simply write the type of wine of a piece if paper and glue it to the bottle, but a proper wine label gives real individuality to your product. With the proper equipment it’s very simple to create a wine label.

Step 1 - Design

The first thing you’ll need for a wine label is a design. This can be very simple or extremely complex; the choice is yours. Come up with a basic idea. If you’re going to work on the computer you can always use clip art, which is often free, as the basis for the label. There are literally thousands of pieces of art that can be used and imported into a wine label.

Step 2 - By Hand

If you have artistic ability or simply want to do it all yourself you can create a wine label by hand. With a ruler and pencil mark out the shape of the label on a piece of paper and create the basic design in pencil. Add color with paints. If you’re a good artist the design could be very colorful and complex. Don’t overdo things. Remember to leave space for the type and year of wine. This will obviously change from batch to batch.

Step 3 - Software

There’s plenty of software available to make wine labels. Some is very cheap and others more expensive. You can pick up good wine label software for around $50. Most of the packages are quite simple to use. Master the learning curve before you try to design a wine label for your wine.

Step 4 - Scanning

If you’ve hand-drawn your own wine label it will still need to be on the computer. To do this it will need to be scanned in. If you don’t have a scanner, buy a scanner/printer or all-in-one combination. They’re very cheap and extremely advanced. Scan in the label design.

Step 5 - Printing

Before printing the wine label decide on the type of stock you’ll use for the label. It’s possible to use regular paper but there will be better results if you use label stock. It’s also possible to buy gummer paper, which will make fixing the label on the bottle much easier, or peel and stick labels. Print the label onto the paper. It might take a little trial and error to have everything line up properly.

Step 6 - Cutting

If using regular paper or label stock it’s possible to cut out the wine label with a pair of scissors. The results will be much better and the edges cleaner if you use a proper paper cutter. To fix the wine label to the bottle, use a good paper glue.  Make sure the labels are straight. Other types of label will self-adhere to the bottles.