parents’ generation, the brand and label
personality are a large driver of how they
select new wines.”
Usual & Unusual Suspects
Looking at the marketplace today,
concepts have crept into practically
every wine category, and patterns are
developing. For instance, red blends
with red in the name are now unofficially
rampant. Red Velvet. Red Guitar. Tractor
Shed Red. Adobe Red. Pillar Box Red.
First Crush Red. Frontier Red. Headless
Red. RedVolution. The list goes on and
on; and the names reinforce that these
wines are proudly off the beaten varietal
path. Two new blends to keep an eye
on: Montes “Twins,” a $13 50/50 blend
of Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon,
combines a catchy, easy-to-recall, makes-
perfect-sense name with nifty Ralph
Steadman art. Cryptic, from the Purple
Wine Company, is pushing the envelope
at the premium end of the red blend
segment; its puzzling package and serious
flavor profile make the SRP of $18 seem
like a bargain.
Zinfandel—having developed a palpa-
ble sense of fanaticism among fans as well
as offering marketers the zesty letter “Z”—
is still varietal, but Zinsters have helped
imbue the wine with a sense of adventure,
from Poizin and Sin Zin to XYZin and
Zen of Zin.
Following in the clownish footsteps of
Goats Do Roam and Fat Bastard, wacky/
witty wines are still going strong. Mom-
my’s Time Out and MommyJuice ben-
efited from a well-publicized spat a while
back; this only helped their similar adult-
fun concepts reach more people. Abduc-
tion Wines hit Earth over the summer
with a bang. Oreana, based in Santa Bar-
bara, teases shoppers with Project Happi-
ness wines featuring a yellow smiley face,
plus a red blend labeled with a big orange
question-mark.
Sometimes the wit manages to in-
corporate meaning, as in the colorful
packaging for GROONER Grüner Velt-
liner. Chilean brands Oops and Root:1
inform about Chile’s lost grape Car-
menère and phylloxera-free vineyards.
And thanks to numerous fruit-centric
wines, the word “naked” has come to
be synonymous with unoaked in the
wine arena.
Then again, sometimes wine names
just wanna have fun: Ménage à Trois,
Mad Housewife, Rude Boy/Girl, Old
Fart, Il Bastardo, Wrongo Dongo, Big
Mouth New Yorkers, Pinot Evil, Oh…
Schist! Riesling, Big Ass Cab, The
Ball Buster, Bitch, Sexy Wine Bomb….
There are plenty of provocative labels in
our midst.
One concept that has made relative-
ly recent impact is what might be called
“
umbrella” labels. Kobrand’s The Seeker,
Tri-Vin’s Tussock Jumper and Vintage
Point’s Layer Cake are singular brands
that collect wines from iconic regions
around the globe.
On the flip side, local wineries are
apt to go conceptual to give their wines
a competitive, fun edge. In New York,
two women in the Hudson Valley got
together to create Happy Bitch rosé bub-
bly. Inspire Moore in the Finger Lakes
makes wines called Joy, Love, Peace,
Wisdom,Truth and more. Also in the
Finger Lakes, Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards
turned the hybrid Catawba grape into
a genuine cult wine—Red Cat, a sweet
red—replete with cartoon cat mascot in
a hot tub on the label.
Celebrity labels are a natural sub-
genre of concept wines. Marilyn Monroe
never got to see her image on a Merlot
bottle, but the ranks of musicians, actors
and reality TV stars have been busy in
the wine biz of late—so busy that
Bever-
age Media
will be devoting an entire ar-
ticle to them next month.
Some concept wines take inspiration
from walks of life not normally connect-
ed to viticulture. High-techy examples
include TXT Cellars; Acronym GR8 Red
Better off red.
Red
blends are all the
rage. Purple Wine
Company’s Cryptic
(
California) and Montes
Twins (Chile) are
pushing the “Splendid
Blended” envelope.
CONCEPT WINES
Witty, Yes; Tasty, Too
A handful of suppliers have emerged
as kings of conceptual wine-ing.
Bonny Doon Vineyard’s portfolio has
long been peppered with puns and
esoterica. Don & Sons (and sibling
company The Other Guys) excel at
creating conventional-looking wines
with kitschy names like Smoking
Loon, Plungerhead, MooBuzz and
more. D’Arenberg, maker of Laughing
Magpie, Stump Jump, Hermit Crab,
etc., helped set the pace for cheeky
Australian wines. At Michael David
Winery, two brothers are churning
out California concepts from Lust and
Sloth to Incognito and Earthquake.
In Washington, Charles Smith has
carved out concept-wine street cred
with K Syrah, Kung Fu Girl Riesling
and Velvet Devil Merlot, among
others. While all these folks clearly
know how to serve up
heapin’ helpin’s of
cleverness, they
have rightly
earned praise for
what’s in their
bottles as well.
FUN