Please do me a favor and pick the wine with the ugliest label.

Me: “How did you pick that wine?”

My friend: “I like the look of the label.”

I'm not sure if there is an actual study or any numbers out there that can tell us the percentage of wine sold based on how “pretty” the label looks, but my guess is a “pretty” high percentage. Drum roll please.

Corniness aside, there are sooooo many people that go in and buy wine solely based on the look of the label. The question is: If you choose a bottle of wine based on the way the label looks, will that get you a bottle of wine that you like more often than not?

From both experience and observation, I say NO.

My estimate is that 33.3% of the time, you will get a wine that you like by choosing solely on the look of the label. If you were blindfolded outside of a good wine shop and led to a random shelf to pick a random bottle, there is also a 33.3% chance that you would pick one that you liked.

There are amazing wines with beautiful labels out there. Tonight’s crowd favorite, by a very slim majority, was Broadbent’s Vinho Verde, which is an outlier; good, cheap, with an attractive label. Yet, more often than not, money spent on making the wine, not the label, will lead to a better product.

So, if you go to a place where they sell wine and there is no one there who can guide you to a wine that you like, leave! Go to a good wine shop curated by qualified, CERTIFIED, wine people and ask them for help picking out a wine. If you don’t have access to a good local wine shop, go in and pick the prettiest and the ugliest (or plainest) looking bottle that you can find. Do a taste test and see what result you get. Sometimes you might find that beauty is only skin, or label, deep.