Since 8 December 2023, wine sold in the European Union must state its ingredients and nutrition information. Instead of printing all of that on the label, you put a QR code on the bottle and the consumer reads the detail on an e-label page. WineryElf builds that page and the QR code for you.
Where: the WineryElf app, the Labels section. (An earlier version of this article pointed to the batch record - the e-label now has a section of its own.)
Filling in the wine details
- In the Labels section pick the wine from the list.
- Complete the description: name, producer, country, vintage, type, alcohol content and volume.
- Enter the ingredients and the allergens (sulphites, for example) - allergens are automatically shown in bold within the ingredient list.
- Give the nutrition values per 100 ml: energy (in both kJ and kcal), fat, carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt.
- Tick Published and save.
Without the energy values (kJ and kcal) the app will not generate the QR code. That is a legal requirement, and it is deliberately not possible to work around it with invented numbers.
The QR code for the bottle
Once saved, choose Print QR label. The code leads to the public e-label page for that wine - you stick it on the bottle or the back label.
Next to the code you can print a caption (“Ingredients”, “Składniki”, “Ingrédients”). We suggest the one matching your app language, but the choice stays yours: if you are bottling for another market, switch the caption language in the selector next to the checkbox. The same applies to the name of the downloaded file.
What the consumer sees
The e-label page shows the name and producer, country and vintage, alcohol content, the ingredients with allergens highlighted and a “Contains:” note, the nutrition table, storage information and the statutory warnings (18+, pregnancy).
The page headings, the browser tab title and the link preview in a messaging app all follow the same language as the rest of the page - English for a phone set to English, Polish for Polish. The language can also be forced by adding ?lang=en or ?lang=pl to the address.
Only the data you enter as public is visible. Nothing from the winery side - batch records, measurements, analyses - appears on that page.
What Regulation 2021/2117 requires
The e-label page is built to satisfy it: it carries product information only (no advertising, no tracking), it is reachable without logging in, it gives the full set of mandatory data and it opens in the consumer’s language.
Good practice
- Scan the code before printing a run - with a phone, exactly as the consumer will.
- Nutrition values: on a dry wine most entries are zero, and the energy comes mainly from the alcohol.
- Allergens: almost every wine contains sulphites.
- Changing the data does not change the page address - a correction to the description shows up immediately and the QR code does not need reprinting.
QR codes stuck on tanks and barrels are a separate matter, covered by the article on printing QR labels for vessels.