Wine labels in Austrian food retail stores: A semiotic analysis of multimodal red wine labels

From a marketing point of view, front labels play a crucial role in the
consumers’ relatively quick decision-making process when buying wine in retail
stores. The aim of this paper was to reveal which semiotic code systems, in particular,
colors, visual representations, and designs, as well as verbal representations,
Austrian wine producers use on the front labels of their red wine bottles.
For that purpose, the method of content analysis was applied on a representative
corpus of red wine labels. Our empirical study showed that the wine labels analyzed
especially appeal to price sensitive customers through the employment of
light colors. In addition, wine producers do not seem to apply the “visual-to-taste
lexicon” as the labels rarely show the color “red.” Furthermore, in a large number
of cases the wine producers use their family names as brand names of their wines.
Moreover, both the depiction of crests and landscapes and the application of indexical
brand names, emphasize the Austrian origin of wines. Finally, the extensive
use of English brand names appears to connect wines to the social stereotypes
of modernity, prestige, and progress.