Back in the old days, all a winemaker needed on his side was good soil, plenty of sunshine and the right know-how. But these are strange times for the increasingly competitive wine industry.
To stand out from the crowd -- more specifically, to lure young drinkers away from neon vodka cocktails -- you've got to have positioning.
In other words, bring on the hunky surfer dudes!
That's the strategy one U.S. company is betting on with a splashy California brand called Twin Fin, launched last year in Western Canada and this past week in Ontario.
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Seeking to tap the laid-back imagery of California sunshine and bacchanalian beach parties, Constellation Brands, the world's largest wine purveyor, is hanging ten with Twin Fin, an innovatively packaged line of wines crafted by two transplanted Australians who look and play like they just stepped out of a Brian Wilson song.
Winemaker Hugh Reimers, 34, teamed up with surfing buddy and viticulturalist Sam Burton, 33, to come up with the concept.
"To me, California is all about the beach, the sand and the sun," says Reimers, a chiselled 6-foot-5 former professional Aussie-rules football player, who developed Twin Fin for Constellation's Pacific Wine Partners subsidiary. "I don't think that anybody had captured California on a wine label before."
No surprise, the label is the key to the venture: It features a retro-styled watercolour of a red 1968 Plymouth Valiant convertible parked on a beach, red-and-yellow "twin fin" surfboard leaning out of the back seat. The message: French chateaus and intimidating appellation gobbledygook be damned.
"Why make wine hard?" the tanned, dirty-blond Burton asks in a thick Aussie accent. "Wine should be easy." Hence the bottles' screw-cap seals, a concession to twentysomethings who would rather fumble with an iPod than a corkscrew.
The concept is clearly working. Launched in February, 2005, the brand's six wines, including (for now in Ontario) a pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon priced at $13.95 each, racked up sales of 2.1 million bottles in the United States in 2005, making it that country's No. 1 new brand of the year.
How do the wines rate? Very well. The pinot noir in particular is a remarkable achievement for less than $20, medium-bodied, with rich cherry and raspberry-like fruit, a classic earthy nuance of beetroot and a silky texture. The cab, too, is impressive, plum-like and toasty, with a hint of dark chocolate and polished, smooth tannins.
The Twin Fin brand is just the latest in a groundswell of labels winning over consumers with their sleek packaging and carefully crafted lifestyle imagery. They include such blockbusters as Fat Bastard from France; Yellow Tail, Little Penguin and Mad Fish from Australia, and Angus the Bull Cabernet Sauvignon, a premium Aussie red conceived specifically for steak lovers untutored in the finer details of food-and-wine pairing.
So-called critter labels aside, perhaps the most ambitiously designed concept to hit the shelves in recent years is Red Bicyclette, a premium French label created by none other than E&J Gallo Winery, the California purveyor of such jug wines as Carlo Rossi and Gallo Hearty Burgundy.
Four years ago, Gerry Glasgow, Gallo's chief marketing strategist, took four colleagues on a research jaunt to Provence to shoot pictures and scribble notes in an attempt to capture the halcyon village lifestyle that American survey respondents associated with an otherwise "intimidating, arrogant" country. Baguettes and bicycles were everywhere, Glasgow says -- most strikingly, a lot of red bicycles.
The result was a label with a cute cartoon of a bereted man riding a two-wheeler trailed by a dog clasping a loaf of bread in its jaw.
In interviews with Gallo-hired psychologists, the company's target market of largely urban professionals in their 20s and 30s were bowled over by the concept. "When they saw the red-bicycle package, a smile came on their face," Glasgow says.
After its U.S. launch in the 2004, the line sold 1.7 million bottles in six months, significantly curtailing an eight-year decline in French-wine sales south of the border.
Curiously, the brand, launched last year in Canada, has gone unsupported by Gallo's deep-pocketed advertising budget. Glasgow says he sat in on an interview with a young banker from Toronto who fell head over heels for the label but quickly balked when asked how he would respond to an ad. "If [sophisticated consumers] see a television commercial for a brand of wine, the first conclusion they make is, well, the wine can't be very good," Glasgow says.
Similar market research has gone into creating other runaway Gallo brands, such as Dancing Bull from California, Black Swan from Australia and a California line of wines spiked with fruit aimed at young females, called Wild Vines.
Not to be outdone, Foster's Wine Estates, the Australian-based giant that controls California's Beringer label, has been using its sensory-research lab in Napa Valley to churn out products with the smoother textures and fruit-forward flavours preferred by North Americans. Beringer's biggest recent coup is a $13-to-$15 brand called Stone Cellars, which sells more than a million cases a year.
The company plans to enhance the Stone Cellars line in Canada this spring with novel single-serving plastic bottles in the 187-millilitre format. "It's about increasing occasions for wine," says Tracey Mason, California-based vice-president of innovation for Foster's Wine Estates Americas. Mason says the company interviewed young consumers disenchanted with beer about perceived barriers to uncorking a bottle. Their answer: "It's heavy, it breaks, it's not convenient because they have to open a whole bottle," she says.
Not all heavily researched products have gone as planned, though. One recent misfire in the United States is Beringer's White Lie Early Season Chardonnay, a reduced-alcohol, low-calorie white aimed, Mason says, at the "harried female who wants everything and not have to pay for it." Press reviews have been favourable, she says, but sales have fallen short. "We're evaluating where it's going to sit in our portfolio."
Pick of the week Twin Fin Pinot Noir ($13.95, product No. 613281). This pinot is a remarkable achievement for less than $20. It's medium-bodied, with rich cherry and raspberry-like fruit.
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