Wine pictures you are allowed to use.

The rule almost everybody gets wrong

A picture being findable does not make it free. Nearly every photograph on the web belongs to whoever took it, and using one for a business — even a small one, even once — is the sort of thing that arrives as an invoice a year later.

This catches wine businesses more than most, because the beautiful cellar photograph was usually taken by a photographer the estate paid, and estates enforce.

Somebody else’s bottle is a second problem

Even a picture you are allowed to use can say something untrue. A stock photograph of a named bottle on your own page implies you sell it. A photograph of a château implies it is yours.

In wine that is not pedantry — appellations, estates and labels are protected names, and using them loosely is the one mistake that turns into a letter.

What is safe

• Your own photographs. Always the best, even taken on a phone. A real picture of your real place beats anything.
• Pictures made to be used, with a licence that says so in words you can read.
• Pictures with no real place or label in them. Nothing in them can be claimed by anybody, and nothing in them claims anything about you.

Our library

We keep a wine picture library — vineyards, cellars and bars, bottles, grapes, glasses, people, and the life around it. Every picture can go on your own page, and it is added to every month.

None of it is a picture of a real estate, a real cellar or a real label, so using one cannot put your name on somebody else’s place. The licence is on one page, in words you can read in a minute.