Preserving Wine Labels: How Do You Do It?
by Erika S., Wine Enthusiast Companies
Recalling a wine label can bring back wonderful memories, not just of the wine itself, but of the moment, the special place, and the people with whom the wine was shared. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have photographic memories so we often forget the image of a label only minutes after the we’re done with our wine.
I read a lovely piece on Serious Grape, in which the author shared her joy in receiving a gift from a relative, it was a a wine book of labels and notes of wines she drank in the 1970s. Flipping through the pages she relived her family’s wine experiences, through labels pasted on notebook paper with handwritten notes beside many.
Customers often ask us how to remove and preserve wine labels as a keepsake. I’ve heard of some very creative methods:
- soaking bottles in hot water and then peeling the label off
- the oven method, in which you place an empty bottle in a hot oven, remove carefully with oven mits, and then peel the label off.
- applying packaging tape to the label and then peeling it off
- using a hairdryer to dry the glue from the back of the label and then removing the label
These methods may work, but to me they sound like a hassle compared to using our easy label savers, which remove and laminate labels in a pinch. No heat, soaking, or tape required! They work by separating the adhesive back from the front-printed surface of the label. They come in sets of 10.
Confused about how they work? We explain in this brief video tutorial.
How do you preserve your labels? What do you do with them afterwards?
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Filed under: Wine Labels
5 Comments
5 Responses to “Preserving Wine Labels: How Do You Do It?”
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March 17th, 2009 at 11:33:53 AM
I have a much easier solution that I have been using for quite some time. I simply take a digital picture of the empty wine bottle and save them on my hard drive. There is room on the picture file for name, vintage, rating, etc. I have quite a collection and it is fun to run the entire file as a slide show during wine tastings.
May 7th, 2009 at 3:06:16 PM
Thanks Michael . . . this is one of this “duh” moments. I’ve occasionally taken a phone camera picture of a label so I remember when I want to buy it again but I hadn’t thought of creating a library. Oh how I wish I’d kept some memorable bottles!
December 1st, 2009 at 6:38:30 PM
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December 6th, 2009 at 12:48:28 PM
I have been using your label removers for several years now and put them in magnetic page photo albums. However, magnetic page photo albums are not easy to find anymore, so I will be looking for other options.
I love using the labels since they are so easy to use. I do find that labels with gold foil or the glossy finished labels are more difficult to remove. Patience is the key here.
March 9th, 2010 at 8:41:14 AM
We have been using the label removers for the past 10+ years. Our storage medium is actually our kitchen table. I refinished the table and purchased a glass top to fit the size of the table. The labels are stored underneath the glass, creating your personal design.