Message on a Bottle

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Further, the vineyard’s clippings were added to recycled paper and these labels were printed with soy-based inks. Besides assisting in the reduction of environmental waste, the bottle signaled Mondavi’s commitment to organic winemaking techniques and was also easier to open. Mondavi started using the wax-seal bottle for its high-end wines, and initially, after it became a hit, the company used it for all its lines; the bottle is now prevalent across the industry. The year after the bottle was introduced, Mondavi’s stock rose from $7 to $33. Once that bottle design became prevalent, the Mondavis dropped it because it no longer signified premium. The company was sold to publicly traded Constellation Wines in late 2004.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

As boxed wine makes inroads on supermarket shelves, wine label designers have the challenge of making it look as appealing as bottles. When the Australian label Hardys introduced its Hardys Stamp boxed wine in this country, Horiszny had to show that the two packages contain the same high-quality wine. To do that, he featured the bottle in a larger-life-photo on the front with a colorful background suggesting a festive dinner party.

As with bottles, boxed wines are also trying to go upscale. One major player is Black Box, also owned by Constellation Brands. Kim Moore, Black Box’s brand manager, says the packaging — a sleek black box with gold cursive lettering — is a key to its success. “We use cues from a typical wine label. We’re the only ones who do that,” Moore says. “But our advantage is we have four sides to work with in telling our story and showing our Best Buy awards, whereas a bottle has limited space.”

Moore has been working with her team to create packaging for the new Reserve Chardonnay and Sonoma Merlot lines, out in November. “We’re trying to figure out how to get the word ‘Reserve’ in there and make it a step up from the baseline,” she says. Moore doubts Black Box will get a redesign but plans to review the color palettes soon. “Right now, the pinot grigio looks a tad too green to me,” she says. 

As with other aspects of the wine industry, some observers feel the design process is becoming too corporate. Pate laments the changes new owners have made to the labels she did for Mondavi and Moet & Chandon. “I feel it’s lost its class and elegance. They don’t understand design, and the new packaging screams corporate,” she says. “History has gotten lost, the packaging has degraded. Even though the wine may be the same, the cachet is lost.” Even Bonny Doon’s Grahm admits he’s pulling back the quirkiness. “When the wine business was smaller, you felt more emboldened to take chances, but now people are much more self-conscious,” he says. “Now that we’re larger, we have to be more circumspect, because we’re trying to sell jillions of bottles of wine.”

What is the future of label design? Some designers see more innovations such as layered paper on bottles, painted bottles and more interesting narratives. Horiszny disagrees, thinking the pendulum will swing back. “I think labels have become so wild and colorful and unexpected that, like Kendall Jackson, they’ll swing to the more conservative. It’s a world market now. Even France is becoming more sophisticated, whereas for years it was hard to understand what was going on with their labels.”

The Fat Bastard story illustrates his point. The company was created by British winemaker Guy Anderson and French winemaker Thierry Boudinard, but they had a hard time finding a suitable name and wine. When tasting some samples, Boudinard, who had a limited English vocabulary, sipped a good Chardonnay, turned to Anderson and said, “Taste zis fat bastard.” Now Fat Bastard is the best-selling French wine in the country. 

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