(Eater) - How the look of a bottle influences what you buy, for better or worse.

One cold weekday earlier this year, I convinced five friends to let me follow them around while they bought wine. We passed row after row of bottles, hundreds of images competing for our 10 to 15 dollars, from chateaus and vineyards to gold pheasants, floating bubbles, a goose mid-flight, and a man with an apple on his head. In split-second decisions, we rejected everything until each of us picked up one special bottle, looked at the label for a few seconds longer, and said to ourselves: sure, this looks good.

That day I learned that my friends know roughly the same amount as I do about wine, which is to say — as casual wine enthusiasts — we don’t know anything about wine. Maybe we lean towards a favorite region, or prefer a particular grape, but that’s about it. We don’t remember any specific bottle we’ve enjoyed. And we are useless at describing taste. Basically, we were just guessing, and in the process, we became accidental design critics.

Wine is one of civilization’s oldest beverages, and some wineries have been around for centuries, preserving their legacy with their chateau’s name. In France, there are longstanding laws about what a bottle of wine can, and cannot, look like. French wines are classified by region, each with strict rules about the growing conditions required to earn the right to display an appellation. That’s why the wine’s name, and maybe an image of a chateau or vineyard, are such prominent elements of a French wine label.

But in the U.S., labelling laws are much looser, making it a designer’s free for all. What a label says about the liquid in the bottle can be a real mystery. So what’s the relationship between the label and the liquid, and which is more important when selling wine today?