The Errant Æsthete

Amusing and entertaining piece from Bloomberg on how fine art, wacky names and sexy images are helping wine bottles stand out from the crowd. Starting with a new Aussie favorite ‘Passion Has Red Lips’ to the exploding category of “critter”-labeled wines (we’ve all had them: Dog House, Fat Cat, Four Emus, Monkey Bay; easy drinking–simple, fruity and boring) marketers are moving into the “adventure” cagtegory next (Twin Fin, which shows a convertible that has a surfboard sticking up from its back seat comes to mind).

Passion Has Red Lips, an Aussie bottling with a trailer-babe image, is just one example of the new wave of provocatively named wines that are adding some juice to the staid art of the wine label.Lately, I’ve encountered dozens of wines with startling labels of all shapes and sizes that sport bright colors, quirky lettering and nostalgic, funky, irreverent or even outrageous images that bear no relation whatsoever to grapes, vineyards or somebody’s estate. Some have names as weird as rock bands. The aim is to seize your attention when you’re facing hundreds of selections in shops by conveying loads of attitude and appealing to an idiosyncratic sense of style. They’re all about pulling in buyers who are happy to judge a book by its cover or who just want to put a conversation-starting, zany-looking bottle on the table.

While the creativity of the label is no certain guide to the style of wine inside the bottle, some of these in-your-face labels, surprisingly, really do match their wines perfectly. And some will lead you to a bottle you’ll actually enjoy emptying.

It all started with the exploding category of inexpensive “critter”-labeled wines, so called for the animals featured on them. Animals have been on labels for years, but recently, they’ve gone wild. Creatures from aardvarks to zebras can now be found on bottles, many with playful names such as Dog House, Fat Cat, Four Emus, Monkey Bay and Smoking Loon. Marketers are thrilled that consumers find critter names easy to remember and regard the wines as friendly and approachable. The cheap prices help. Most are easy drinking–simple, fruity and boring.

With animal labels, you generally get what you pay for. Nonetheless, market research firm ACNielsen reported last year that critter brands accounted for almost 20 percent of the 438 labels launched successfully from 2003 to ’05 and outsold noncritter labels 2 to 1. Industry giant Constellation Brands Inc.’s 2004-05 Project Genome study identified six types of wine consumers: enthusiasts, savvy shoppers, traditionalists, satisfied sippers, image seekers and the overwhelmed. The last two are the most likely to go for fun animal brands like 3 Blind Moose.

A wider “adventure” category is now challenging the critters; these labels try to match lifestyle with vino. Many feature vehicles, such as good-value Red Truck, full-throttle Red Car and new market leader Twin Fin, which shows a convertible that has a surfboard sticking up from its back seat.

That image looks tame next to the edgy ones on the Aussie bottlings imported by Ronnie Sanders of Philadelphia’s Vine Street Imports, who says he’s convinced that labels are all-important. “The Shinas Estate had a terrible label but great wines,” he says. “Their shiraz was called Shallow Creek, and the label was a picture of where the owner went fishing. It took me two years to sell 600 cases.” Shinas’s owner was a criminal court judge, so Sanders suggested changing the labels so they “tell a story.” The winery called its next shiraz The Guilty and its viognier The Innocent. This fall, Sanders expects to sell 5,000 cases of the Shinas Estate brands, up 20 percent from last year and more than 16 times what he sold before the labels were changed.

Killibinbin, dumped by its previous importer, is another Vine Street turnaround. The new labels look like posters for 1950s horror flicks–a woman screams on the shiraz, and one man strangles another on the cabernet–and the wines are hits. My favorites in Sanders’s lineup are the labels from a trio who call themselves Some Young Punks. The labels are copies of the lurid covers of the kind of paperbacks teenagers hid from their parents back in the 1950s, and the wines have names such as Naked on Roller Skates and Quickie.

Sex sells, and these days even porn stars make wines. But buyers seeking classic label allure need look no further than Marilyn Monroe’s iconic image. Nova Wines debuted a Marilyn Merlot back in the 1980s, and the latest guises now include a youthful, fresh- and-fruity Norma Jeane merlot and a plush Velvet Collection cab- merlot blend with lip-nibbling tannins and a “peel-and-peek” overlay on the label that reveals Monroe in her famous nude calendar pose.

All of the Marilyn wines have become hot collectibles. Bottles from the 1980s traded at $200-$3,000 each in early August, while the 1993 Marilyn Merlot, which was $18 on release, traded at about $400. Magnums of the 2002 Velvet Collection blend went for double their $200 release price.

A label designed by a well-known artist is usually a tip-off to a pricey, serious wine. Château Mouton Rothschild was the first to commission a different artist each year to dash off something for the label, a practice that’s been adopted by a number of wineries. Since 1981, German art collector Peter Femfert, owner of Tuscan estate Fattoria Nittardi, has commissioned a different artist every year to create a label for a limited edition of his Casanuova di Nittardi Chianti Classico. For the 2004, released this year, Yoko Ono contributed a colored-ink drawing of glasses and bottles titled Imagine you.

Just imagine what’s next.