2 min read
Grapely: the Douro startup making wine e-labels simple
We are a small team of winemakers and developers from the Douro Valley. We built Grapely because the EU e-label rules landed hardest on the producers least equipped to deal with them. This is who we are and what we do.
Where we come from
Grapely is based in the Douro Valley, in northern Portugal. The team is a mix of people who have worked in wineries and people who have built software, with more than fifteen years of combined experience in each. We also lean on friends and advisers in France, Italy and Argentina who have lived through the same regulatory changes in their own regions.
Why we built it
On 8 December 2023, Regulation (EU) 2021/2117 made ingredient lists and nutrition declarations mandatory for wine. Large groups had compliance departments and label agencies to absorb it. A family estate with twelve wines and one person doing the labels did not.
The practical answer was the e-label: energy and allergens on the bottle, everything else on a page behind a QR code. But the tools available at the time were either built for other industries, priced for big players, or so bare that producers still had to figure out the rules themselves. We thought a winery should be able to publish a compliant e-label in the time it takes to make a coffee, without reading the regulation first.
What Grapely does
One thing: wine e-labels, done properly.
- A guided builder that asks for every mandatory field and nothing else.
- An energy calculator that turns ABV, residual sugar, acids and polyols into kJ and kcal per 100 ml.
- Automatic translation into all 24 official EU languages.
- A QR code for every published label, exported in SVG, EPS, PDF or PNG.
- Pages that load fast, carry no marketing and track nobody, which is what the regulation requires.
- Labels that can be edited after the bottles are printed.
- Unlimited brands and users on every plan, so your designer and your importer can work in the same account.
How we work
We talk to producers a lot. Many of the features above exist because someone with a label deadline called us. When the rules change, as they did with Regulation (EU) 2026/471 this year, we read the text, publish what it means, and adjust the product before the application date. Support is handled by the people who build the product, in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Try it
Your first three e-labels are free, with every feature and no time limit. Create your account at app.grapely.io or compare plans.
Related reading
- wine startup
- e-labels
- Douro
- wine labeling
