Last week, I wrote about wine labels as a source of information. This week, I’m looking at them as a marketing tool, by which I don’t mean a posh name or a gold-embossed script, but how a producer can give the impression that his wine is cooler or more upmarket than it actually is.
A recent study by the University of Adelaide found that an emotive label encourages people to spend more on a bottle of wine. That mainly relates to descriptions, but it could equally well apply to names and images.
Virgin, whose slightly too slick slogan is “Life’s too short for boring wine”, has certainly taken this message to heart, stocking a range of wines from a McLaren Vale-based project called 50S at between £12.99 and £16.99 a bottle, which is a fair bit more than the going rate for shiraz. By and large, the contents deliver, too. I particularly like the 50S Shiraz Touriga 2016 (£16.99; 13.5% abv), an intensely lush red with a very un-PC picture of a sultry woman smoking a fag (how did they get away with that?); the slightly cheaper 50S Project Red Blend 2015 (£12.99; 14.5% abv), which uses grapes left over from other bottlings, makes lipsmacking drinking, too.
Or there’s the SC Pannell Field St Shiraz 2015 (£16.95 justincases.co.uk; 14% abv), a textbook McLaren Vale shiraz with deep, voluptuous fruit. The label alone is hard enough to resist, but it’s the words that seduce. Pannell describes it as “our house wine – the very heart of what we are trying to achieve. It’s where we have our vines in the earth and our feet on the ground.” I’m sold, anyway.
Labels are also used to disguise less fashionable origins. Aldi recently listed a dark, full-bodied red called Black Star (14% abv) that you’d have sworn was Australian, but in fact turns out to be from Germany’s Pfalz region. And, at £6.99, very good it is, too, assuming you can still find a bottle. Or what about Smart Dog Syrah Trincadeira 2015 (£8.95 House of Townend, £9.40 Manor Wines, £9.70 Tanners; 13.5% abv), a cheerful, juicy red to swig with a pizza? Australia again? Nope, this one’s from Portugal’s Alentejo. Plus, a wine with a critter on the label is always a winner – my dachshund-owning neighbour loved it.
Even ultra-traditional sherry producers are playing the game. Take a look at – or, better still, drink – the super-fresh Xeco Fino (£16.99 Master of Malt; 15% abv), with its square-shouldered, clear bottle and cool-looking label, which we’re instructed to “enjoy straight up as the Spanish do or as a long drink over ice with good-quality tonic or lemonade.” “Straight up” sherry? What would the vicar say?
