This is not a wine review. That’s not what I’m doing here. This is praise for great packaging. (Hedges Red Mountain Estate Cabernet Sauvignon was used in March’s wine club. )
A great deal of thought goes into the appearance of wine bottles, labels and boxes. It can also cost a LOT of money! There are graphic designers that will charge between $50,000 and $100,000 just to create a wine label. You have seen these in grocery stores before. They are the ones you notice from 30 feet away. You might even be able to scan the bottle with your phone to make a little movie appear. Yes, that’s cool, and yes, it might get new people into trying a wine. But does it make the product better or tell people what they are about to drink?
Occasionally a winery nails it with a perfect, classic look. Check out the wine at the top of this post. It is a lay-down three pack. They designed this box specifically so you could buy 3 or 6 bottles and put them in your cellar. Smart! 12-pack cases are hard to store unless you have a huge cellar. And since the bottles are laying down they will age better. Even smarter!
Now check out the label. This is as close to perfect as I’ve seen on a domestic wine. It gives me the clue words to tell me everything I could want to know up front: estate grown, Red Mountain, Washington, Cabernet. I know what I am getting myself into here. This too would attract my attention on a retailer’s shelf. Plus it would look awesome sitting on my table at a fancy restaurant. (or in my house…)
The back label is equally impressive. It details technical wine-making information. Maybe we don’t know what it means if the grapes were picked on a certain day. Or how the wine changes if the TA goes up or down a tenth of a percent. But what is nice is they paid attention to those details. They want you to know a lot of work went into making this wine. There are a lot of wines in grocery these days that go out of their way to hide what is in the bottles. Not here!
I want my wine to have the complete package: it tastes good, the winery is real, it has a solid story (not made up), it looks good, and I want to feel like I paid an appropriate amount for the bottle. Too often the wines we buy are missing one or more of the traits above so it is refreshing when they all come together. Those are the ones we want to buy more of and to tell our friends about.
Happy drinking.
Always the Wine Guy 