(WineFolly) - “White label” wines are relabeled or rebranded wines created out of the bulk wine market. While some are good, many are nothing more than relabeled bulk wines from the world’s largest wine producers.

Where do those bottles of “Oh Snap” Chenin Blanc or “Napa River” Syrah come from? When you think about wine production, you might want to imagine a bucolic country winery where a happy sun-wrinkled farmer hand-bottles his wines and delivers it to you by way of a retailer (Trader Joes, Bevmo, etc). Certainly a lot of these wines’ marketing materials would try to make you believe in an agricultural fairy-tale. In reality, many of these wines are created by a process that looks more like some sort of heavy industry. Even when these wines are pitched as relabeled $30–$100 wines and offered at a 10th of the price, who’s to say that’s 100% true?

“If you thought it was too good to be true, you were probably right.”

The Trouble With White Label Wines

I call this category of wines white label wines. White label wines are often created by commercial (i.e. bulk) wineries and sold to retailers via partnerships–just like any other white label product. It’s effectively a fulfillment agreement from the producer to the final retailer.

“Technically, there’s nothing wrong with white label wines.”

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with white label wines. In fact, there’s a similar type of wine business in France called a negociant. Many of these French companies (including Barton & Guestier, Bouchard Père et Fils, and Louis Latour, just to name a few) are well respected and own some proportion of their own winery operations and vineyards.