The Auswine Forum

It is a quiet day in Paris as we run up to the end of our second confinement so forgive me a random flight of fancy.

I just received an email offering a wine called Joliette and at almost the same moment a delivery of a mixed dozen from Portugal arrived and it got me thinking about the mystery of branding when it comes to wine.

First, Joliette- my question is, has anyone here ever heard of it? It is being offered in 6 bottle cases, 4 dry, 2 sweet, from vintages in the late 90's or early 00's at €1,200 per six ... The seller claims this is a mystical wine (me, I never heard of it, but that might just mean I lack sophistication).
https://www.ventealapropriete.com/ventes-pri ... 15&id=6564

When I search- apparently it is mystical, in the sense that no one (possibly including the guy who now runs the winery) really knows what the hell they have been doing. But supposedly very serious people love the wine and pay lots of money for old bottles, even though most people have probably never even tried it.

Why? Neal Martin waxes lyrical: "a wine label design can mold preconceptions of the wine. A handful of labels are iconic and act as irresistible, subliminal magnetic forces upon the inquisitive wine-lover. Think of the unmistakable black and white typeface of DRC, the eye-catching bold yellow and red of Figeac – and add to that list Clos Joliette." ... but even he seems to have tried only perhaps a dozen examples of this estate.
https://www.vinous.com/articles/resurrecting ... e-jan-2020

So is it amazing or is this just label chasing for the sake of having the rarest thing, whether or not that thing is actually good? (and I mean AU$300+ good!)...

And then I looked at this selection of wines from Portugal (which I picked almost at random, not being even slightly an expert on the region). Mostly about $30 AUD equivalent (so neither cheap not over the top). I am sure they will offer good, food friendly drinking- some of them might even come close to being excellent. Yet almost uniformly I am struck by how "average" the packaging is. Cheap, uninteresting labels. Crappy plastic capsules... just somehow to my mind lacking the "wow factor".

The Spanish wine makers do a remarkably good job on this, yet somehow it seems not to have crossed to the other side of the Iberian peninsula at all. I have had some very good wines from Portugal, yet they never really feature on the radar of most wine lovers. Why is that?

So the thought strikes me- how much are we really influenced by the label and the branding and all of the connotations they bring?

sjw_11 wrote:So the thought strikes me- how much are we really influenced by the label and the branding and all of the connotations they bring?

I'd love to give the altruistic answer and say "not at all" - but I know that isn't true, ad off the top of my head I cant think of anything in the cellar right now that is poorly branded or packaged. We put a lot of time into branding and label design at Auburn, as there was a market position and status we wanted to imply and because we know it makes a subconscious, psychological difference. And we were just three guys making a few thousand litres a year!

Its disappointing to see good wines in shitty packaging which (to me) implies a lack of care.

A really bad label might put me off, but it has to be so bad it reminds me of the efforts of graphic designers to get people to trade up from £5 and bottle to £6. Invariably it's clumsy.

At the extreme opposite end, occasionally OTT packaging is sure to turn me off, including an excellent Emilia-Romagnan producer Unberto Cesari, who alongside good wines, decided he needed to package one up with Swarovski crystals encrusted into the bottle

More commonly, wax seals are a major irritation, and only slightly less, huge dreadnought bottles. If the wine can't impress on its own, no fancy bottle can rectify the situation.

As far as branding goes, it can't trump pedigree. For cheap or unknown wines, yes, packaging is all, until you open the thing. But it's hard to think of a single 'great wine' whose packaging would be suggested today by any kind of branding/marketing/graphic design guru. Not the top echelon of Bdx, although I'd grant Mouton a little license for the artwork. Not Y'quem. Nor GC burg, all of whose labels are dull, workmanlike, old-fashioned affairs. Not library catalogues like Grange or Vega Sicilia. Nothing German, with its florid baroque scripts, verging on the unreadable. Maybe Prum, Loosen, Donnhoff are a bit cleaner and more modern, but they hardly scream 'grab me' except to the knowledgeable. Most of the US big guns have pretty sober, dull labels too. Maybe Ridge, but again it's heading towards the Grange/Unico style.
I'm not saying any of these labels are 'bad', but they're not marketing-driven.

Ian S wrote:A really bad label might put me off, but it has to be so bad it reminds me of the efforts of graphic designers to get people to trade up from £5 and bottle to £6. Invariably it's clumsy.

At the extreme opposite end, occasionally OTT packaging is sure to turn me off, including an excellent Emilia-Romagnan producer Unberto Cesari, who alongside good wines, decided he needed to package one up with Swarovski crystals encrusted into the bottle

More commonly, wax seals are a major irritation, and only slightly less, huge dreadnought bottles. If the wine can't impress on its own, no fancy bottle can rectify the situation.

Standish wines?

For a time now a neighbour buddy of mine and myself have been running the blind tasting model. Vino into conical flask and trot over for a little bit of wine quiz hullabaloo. In other words label is rarely sighted. Been doing this for a while. Helps keep the focus purely on the juice.

Having said that, as a graphic designer, the label and look feel of a bottle is of interest to me. Often logos and styles really reflect and channel the producers/makers ideals and prinicples. There's a number of unnamed producers who just don't get it right in the labelling/look feel stakes though. Make fantastic juice but let themselves done in the visual department massively. Sometimes it's a bit 'who the fork am I'? to tell someone how they should be doing things. But i'm pretty confident in alot of cases, as a graphic designer, I could improve some of these dogs breakfast wine labels out of sight. It's just how many toes I'm prepared to step on bringing it to light. In most cases it just isn't worth it. And know one likes a 'know it all smart arse'!

I had never heard of the wine until I read the Martin review. I’d be interested in trying, but imagine it would be in the $400+ league by the time it gets here.

France is a big wine are and there are lots of wines that are popular and very expensive there that are probably unknown in Auz - been in the lookout for a while for Arretxea, with no luck.

Portugal for me has been the best source of interesting white wine for a while. They make great wine at modest prices and I guess they don’t need any fancy labels.

GraemeG wrote:As far as branding goes, it can't trump pedigree. For cheap or unknown wines, yes, packaging is all, until you open the thing. But it's hard to think of a single 'great wine' whose packaging would be suggested today by any kind of branding/marketing/graphic design guru.

But can’t that be, in itself, a potential gimmick? The pitch being “a label this plain or confusing must mean the wine is amazing”?

Ian S wrote:
More commonly, wax seals are a major irritation, and only slightly less, huge dreadnought bottles. If the wine can't impress on its own, no fancy bottle can rectify the situation.

Funnily enough I still like wax capsules. They somehow suggest to me an old-school producer. And as long as you just drill the corkscrew through them, they aren’t really any more bother than a normal capsule. The Spanish have a strange love of wax capsules, no idea why.

On the other hand, I also dislike dreadnought bottles, totally unnecessary.