Appellations, strength, quantity, warnings, allergens and barcodes — every one of them arrived on a datable morning, in one market at a time. This is the research behind Label Studio, and the reason a label that is right for 1935 cannot also be right for 1995.
A drink label is an advertisement wrapped round a legal declaration. The house may print whatever it likes in the middle; the edges belong to the revenue, the weights-and-measures inspector and the health ministry — and every one of those lines arrived on a date you can look up.
These are the lines that date a bottle, a can or a tin from across the room. Get one wrong for its year and a shelf reads as a costume shop.
| When & where | What appears on the object |
|---|---|
| 1933–1964 · USA | Federal law forbids sale or re-use of this bottle — required on American liquor from the end of Prohibition until the notice was dropped in 1964. Its presence dates a bottle to a thirty-year window on its own. |
| 1935 · USA | The Federal Alcohol Administration Act puts strength on every spirit label. American labels carry proof alongside percentage; European ones never do. |
| 1936– · France | The decree-law of 30 July 1935 creates the INAO and the appellation d’origine contrôlée. “Appellation X Contrôlée” under the name is the form from 1936 on; since 2009 AOP may stand in for it, but AOC is still the norm on French shelves. |
| 1963 / 1980 / 1992 · Italy | D.P.R. 930 of 12 July 1963 creates the DOC — first wines recognised 1966, the line set in small capitals under the name. DOCG follows for a few wines from 1980; law 164 of 10 February 1992 creates the IGT. Before 1992 such a wine is a vino da tavola. |
| 1971 · Germany | The Weingesetz of 14 July 1971 defines the thirteen Anbaugebiete and the categories Tafelwein, Q.b.A. and Qualitätswein mit Prädikat. Every quality wine carries the A.P.Nr. from its official tasting — the last two digits are the year of the test. From 1 August 2007 the Prädikat wines are simply “Prädikatswein”. |
| 1969–2009 · Greece | Ν.Δ. 243/1969 and the decrees of 1971 create the Ο.Π.Α.Π. — Νάουσα, Νεμέα, Σαντορίνη, Μαντινεία — and Ο.Π.Ε. for the sweet wines of Σάμος and Μαυροδάφνη. A numbered control strip crossed the capsule: red for Ο.Π.Α.Π., blue for Ο.Π.Ε. |
| 1 Aug 2009 · EU | Regulation (EC) 479/2008 folds the national appellations into one scheme: Ο.Π.Α.Π. and Ο.Π.Ε become Π.Ο.Π., Τοπικός Οίνος becomes Π.Γ.&Epsilon.; French vin de pays becomes IGP. A 2015 label saying Ο.Π.Α.Π. is old stock or a mistake. |
| 1 Jan 1979 / 1980 · USA | American wine goes metric on 1 January 1979 and spirits on 1 January 1980. Before that a bottle is a fifth (25.6 fl oz); afterwards it is 750 ml. A “1 QUART” line on a 1985 bottle is wrong. |
| 1980 · UK | Britain measures spirit strength in Sikes degrees proof until the changeover to % vol at the start of 1980. 70° proof is 40% vol. |
| Dec 1988 · EU | Directive 87/250/EEC fixes the “% vol” form for drinks above 1.2%. Before it the continent printed degrees — 12°, 12°5 — France under the fraud laws from the 1930s, Italy and Spain the same way. A “% vol” on a 1960s French label is the wrong century. |
| 1988 · USA | Contains sulfites, required by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms wherever SO₂ exceeds 10 ppm — which is nearly all wine. |
| 18 Nov 1989 · USA | The Government Warning, in that exact wording and in bold caps, on everything bottled on or after that date. Nothing before it carries the line — the single fastest way to date a US bottle. |
| 1976 → mid-80s · EU | The ℮ mark (Directive 76/211/EEC): the average fill meets the stated quantity. It spreads through the late seventies and is everywhere by the mid-eighties. |
| 1991 / 2005 / 2014 / 2016 · EU | Lot marking from 1991 (89/396/EEC, so a batch can be recalled); allergen declaration from 25 November 2005 (2003/89/EC); the fourteen named allergens made to stand out from December 2014; the back-of-pack nutrition table compulsory from 13 December 2016 (Reg. 1169/2011). |
| 1991– · Germany | The packaging ordinance of 1991 creates Der Grüne Punkt; it spreads across continental packs through the nineties. Never on a British-only pack. |
| Oct 2007 · France | The crossed-out pregnant silhouette, required in France and then carried on export labels across the continent. |
| 1988 · Italy | D.L. 397/1988 puts the recycling exhortation on every drinks container sold in Italy — the quickest tell of an Italian label of the period. |
| 2003 / 2006 · Germany | The compulsory Pfand on one-way containers from 1 January 2003 at 25 cents; the DPG mark follows in 2006. Returnable glass had carried 8 or 15 Pfennig for decades without it being printed. |
| 1971– · USA | Oregon’s bottle bill of 1971 starts the deposit legends that crowd the side of American cans; more states join through the seventies and eighties. |
| 1974 · Canada | The Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act makes both official languages compulsory. A unilingual Canadian pack after that date is wrong. The bilingual nutrition box phases in 2003–2005. |
| 1995 / 2020 · Australia | The standard-drinks statement compulsory from 1995 — a national signature no other market prints. The pregnancy pictogram in red, black and white mandated by FSANZ in 2020 with a transition to 2023. |
| May 1994 · USA | The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act makes the boxed Nutrition Facts panel compulsory on packaged food. Before then a can carried ingredients and little else. |
| 1974 / 1977 | UPC scanning starts in American groceries in 1974, EAN in Europe from 1977. A barcode is unusual on a bottle before about 1980 and universal by 1990. |
The oldest rule of all. A name and a place responsible for the goods is the earliest labelling requirement there is — and the most useful line for a close-up, because it can carry your invented house and a real-sounding town without borrowing anyone’s trademark.
Every label in the studio is sized from the true circumference of the vessel it goes on, because that is how a converter quotes a die. A wrap that is 4 mm short reads as a mistake from two metres away, and a neck band cut to the body diameter would go round the bottle twice — which is exactly the error that makes a prop label look printed by guess.
| Vessel | Body ø | Round | What the label does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bordeaux 750 | 76 mm | 239 mm | Front panel plus a back label; a neck band on the narrow finish, a shoulder strip on the slope. |
| Burgundy 750 | 80 mm | 251 mm | Sloping shoulder: the label sits lower and wider than on a claret bottle. |
| Champagne 750 | 88 mm | 276 mm | Heavy bottle, deep punt, a foil that reaches the shoulder. |
| Longneck 330 | 61 mm | 192 mm | Front label plus a neck oval — the post-Prohibition export bottle. |
| A1 food can | 73 mm | 229 mm | A full wrap with a seam; the lid is a separate disc. |
| Preserve jar 370 | 70 mm | 220 mm | A band round the body and a lid disc or a cloth cover. |
| Syrup pail 1 lb | 92 mm rim | — | A sloping wall: the blank is not a rectangle at all (see below). |
A pail, a tub, a pot and a paper cup all taper, and a label wrapped round one is a frustum development — an annular sector struck from the apex of the cone, not a rectangle. Cut it square and the blank creases at the seam and the type runs downhill. The geometry a die house asks for is four numbers: the top circumference, the bottom circumference, the label height (measured along the slanted wall, not the vertical rise) and how far round it goes. From those, the inner radius is L·r₋/(r⁺−r₋), the outer is that plus the slant height, and the sweep is 360·(r⁺−r₋)/L degrees. If that comes out past 360° the wall is too steep for a label that short and no die can save it. Type on such a blank must sit on arcs concentric with the apex; warping a rectangle instead curves it about the wrong centre and stretches every glyph.
And the bleed is not what most people draw. Offsetting the two arcs is easy; the two straight sides are radii, and a true parallel offset of a radius is not another radius — it is a straight line whose perpendicular distance from the apex is the bleed itself, so its corner on an arc of radius R sits asin(bleed/R) further round. Move only the arcs and the blank is short of ink by the full bleed at both seams, which on a wrap is precisely where it shows.
Choose the method the year could actually manage, and let it mark the ink. This is what separates a label that reads as 1935 from one that reads as 1935 printed last week.
| Method | In use | What it leaves |
|---|---|---|
| Letterpress | 1860s–1950s | Type and engraved blocks, one or two inks, a slight bite into the paper and ink haloing at the edges of the letters. |
| Stone & offset litho | 1860s– | Flat colour and fine tints; the rosette only appears once halftone screens arrive. |
| Chromolithography | 1860s–1930s | Many solid stones, gold and embossing — the loudest Victorian labels, and impossible after the trade moved on. |
| Rotogravure | 1920s– | Deep, saturated colour with a soft cell edge. Big runs and tinned goods. |
| Screen / ACL | 1930s– | Applied colour direct to glass: flat opaque inks, no paper at all — the soda bottle that has no label to peel. |
| Flexography | 1970s– | Fast web printing on paper and film; slight dot gain and a visible trap. |
| Digital | 2000s– | Clean, and wrong for anything period. Useful only when the scene is now. |
White wove, cream laid, antique buff, coated white, metallised and gold foil, kraft, bare tinplate, or no substrate at all where the colour is applied straight to the glass. The stock decides how the ink sits and how the label ages: a chromolitho on antique buff yellows into the design, the same artwork on coated white in 2003 does not.
American spirits: 1 mm on containers of 187 ml or less, 2 mm from 188 ml to three litres and above. Europe: an x-height of 0.9 mm on faces under 80 cm², 1.2 mm or more for mandatory particulars. It matters for a prop because an insert lens is exactly where a continuity check starts.
A note on what is never drawn. Real fiscal strips, real appellation seals, real state emblems and the red cross on white are not reproduced by the studio and should not be added by hand to a prop that will appear on camera. An invented house in a real-sounding town, with the right lines for its year, is both safer and more convincing.
The Greek appellation system is the one in this collection that was renamed wholesale, which makes it the sharpest dating instrument on any label here. Three eras, and the boundaries are hard.
| On the label | Years | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Ο.Π.Α.Π. + the place | 1971–2009 | Ονομασί&alpha Προελεύσεως Ανωτέρας Ποιότητος, created by Ν.Δ. 243/1969 and the decrees of 1971 — Νάουσα, Νεμέα, Σαντορίνη, Μαντινεία and the rest. |
| Ο.Π.Ε. | 1971–2009 | Ελεγχομένη — the controlled appellation, for the sweet wines of Σάμος and the Μαυροδάφνη. |
| ΤΟΠΙΚΟΣ ΟΙΝΟΣ | 1989–2009 | The Greek vin de pays — Υ.Α. 392169/1989 — for a wine from a named area without an appellation. |
| Π.Ο.Π. / Π.Γ.Ε. | 2009 on | Regulation (EC) 479/2008, in force 1 August 2009, folded the national appellations into the EU scheme: Ο.Π.Α.Π. and Ο.Π.Ε. both became Π.Ο.Π. and Τοπικός Οίνος became Π.Γ.Ε. A 2015 label saying Ο.Π.Α.Π. is old stock, or a mistake. |
And one physical detail that no other market has: the Ο.Π.Α.Π. bottle wore a numbered control strip over the capsule — red for Ο.Π.Α.Π., blue for Ο.Π.Ε. If the scene has the bottle in shot rather than the label, that strip is the thing that says Greek.
The other four continental markets set their own boundaries the same way, and the year a country joined the common market matters as much as its national law: a national market is also the common market from accession — France, Germany and Italy 1958, Greece 1981, Spain 1986 — so an EU obligation cannot appear on a Greek label before 1981 however old the directive is.
Four markets added in September 2026. Two limits hold in every studio: Turkey starts in 1928, the year the Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic script (an earlier Turkish sheet would be Ottoman, which no studio sets), and Russian before 1918 is spelled by rule — the hard sign on every word ending in a consonant and і before a vowel are placed automatically; the yat (ѣ) cannot be derived from modern spelling and is left as е. Turkish capitals keep their dots: i goes to İ and ı to I, so İSTANBUL, never ISTANBUL.
| Country | What the studio changes, and when |
|---|---|
| Portugal | GS1 prefix 560. Wine carries Região Demarcada 1908–1989, the numbered selo de garantia 1937–1985, DOC from 1990 and Vinho Regional from 1993. EU obligations from accession, 1 January 1986. |
| Netherlands | GS1 87. Statiegeld on beer and soft-drink bottles from 1930, statutory on plastic from 2006; the NIX18 line on alcohol from 2014. A founder of the common market, so EU rules apply from 1958. |
| Turkey | GS1 869. Türk Malı 1929–1999; the state monopoly line on spirits 1928–2003; the production-permit number 1996–2011 and the business registration number from 2012; İçindekiler and the best-before from 1998; the alcohol warning from 2014; Besin değerleri from 2020. |
| Russia | GS1 46. The Empire to 1917 in the old orthography; the Soviet label with its ГОСТ (from 1926), the people’s commissariat 1934–45 and then the ministry line, the state price printed on the label 1935–1991 and the Знак качества 1967–1991; Сделано в России from 1992, Состав and Годен до from 1998, the alcohol warning from 1996 and the contra-indications from 2006, Пищевая ценность and the EAC mark from 2013. The country of manufacture is СССР from 1922 to 1991. |
Everything above is traceable to a primary instrument or a trade standard.
EU · Directive 76/211/EEC (℮) · 87/250/EEC (% vol) · 89/396/EEC (lot marking) · 2003/89/EC (allergens) · Regulation (EC) 479/2008 and the 2009 wine reform · Regulation (EU) 1169/2011
France · décret-loi du 30 juillet 1935 (INAO, AOC) · décret de 1973 (vin de pays)
Italy · D.P.R. 930/1963 (DOC) · legge 164/1992 (IGT) · D.L. 397/1988
Germany · Weingesetz 14 July 1971 · Landwein 1982 · Verpackungsverordnung 1991 · Pfandpflicht 2003
Greece · Ν.Δ. 243/1969 · the 1971 appellation decrees · Υ.Α. 392169/1989 (Τοπικός Οίνος)
Spain · Estatuto del Vino 1932 · Estatuto de la Viña, del Vino y de los Alcoholes 1970 · Rioja DOCa 1991
UK · Food Labelling Regulations 1984 · metrication from 1995 · the 2007 voluntary unit-labelling scheme and the 2016 guidelines
USA · Federal Alcohol Administration Act 1935 · 27 CFR (ATF/TTB) type-size and sulfite rules · Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act 1988, in force 18 November 1989 · NLEA 1990, panels from May 1994
Australia / Canada / Japan · FSANZ standard drinks 1995 and pregnancy labelling 2020 · Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act 1974 · Japanese containers and packaging recycling law 2001
Geometry · frustum development as set out in any sheet-metal pattern-cutting manual; ECMA and rotary-die minimum corner radii for the cut
Everything on this page is built into the studio: pick a year and a market and it applies the right rules for you, and tells you why.
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