Borrowed this from news.com.au and thought it was interesting.Members of the World Wine Trade Group, an informal body of government and industry representatives from Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and South Africa, signed a treaty yesterday to standardise label placement requirements for mandatory product information.

The agreement means each country will have the same rules for the placement of information such as country of origin, product name, net contents and alcohol content on wine labels.

Existing laws in each country often require producers to print different front and back labels for each export market.

Under the new protocol, wineries will be able to print a single front label regardless of the market, saving on design, printing and production costs.

While labels on the back of the bottle will still need to be different for each export market, Winemakers Federation of Australia spokesman Simon Birmingham said Australian wineries would save a total of $25 million a year once the new measures were in place, anticipated in 2008.

Mr Birmingham said the WFA hoped to use the protocols as a model for agreements with other wine markets.

Not sure how this will affect us as wine consumers, but I assume the biggest advantage will be being able to recognise that bottle of wine you had in Australia on the shelf at you local liquor store. So good news all around!