Shelf life of wine

[yachtsman1]

I bought two bottles of Claret from my local supermarket. When I checked the bottle lables later I found the followind dates stamped on them. "L 10/03/06" and "1 12.31 03" are these anything to do with the shelf life or bottling date and is the wine safe to drink.
Stearman

[Innkeeper]

Hi Yachtsman, and welcome to the Wine Board. The most important information is the Brand and vintage date, to determine shelf life.

[TheEngineer]

IK is certainly bang on so if you could provide that, it would help.

The dates could be nothing more than date bottled (guessing here of course) but the second date could be an expire date. I know that in some countries, wines less than 11% alcohol have to have an expire date on them regardless of whether they need them or not. No worries for some of the wines on steroids but certainly (and interestingly) for Icewines, Tokajis, etc, which have tremendous shelf lives, this is required.