The hand-made metallic champagne bottles with pewter labels from Armand de Brignac has taken the fashionista bottle concept a step further.

Packaging is a critically important element of a wine brand. There are few other consumer goods categories where the look and feel of the product are as important, if not more, than the product inside the package, at least for buyers otherwise unfamiliar with the wine. Though consumers are sometimes given an opportunity to sample wines before they make their retail purchases, packaging often plays a major part in the consumer's decision-making process. Packaging is not only used for marketing and brand building, but also as a way to set themselves apart from their competitors.

Wineries and wine industry companies routinely send Wine Business Monthly notices of packaging news, innovations or brand redesigns. One of the most interesting package designs WBM recently received was from Champagne brand Armand de Brignac, from the luxury Cattier Champagne house. Champagne, especially luxury Champagne, is a category that has often featured attention-grabbing packaging, such as dressing the bottle in designer-label vinyl corsets or offering single-serve cans with an attached straw.

Armand de Brignac took the fashionista bottle concept a step further and has released their Champagne in hand-made metallic bottles with pewter labels. The look is achieved by coating glass bottles in a shiny metal alloy (the exact composition of which is a patented "trade secret"), followed by the hand-application of spade-shaped pewter labels and a final polishing. The bottles are available in gold for the Brut Gold Champagne, silver for the Blanc de Blancs or pink for Rosé. According to a company spokesperson, the bottles were developed as a partnership between Chateau Cattier and Andre Courrages, the inventor of the mini-skirt.

WBM has compiled more of the most interesting and noteworthy items below. First, though, are brief reports about a pair of wine packaging-related studies we feel are of interest to the wine industry.

The first report is from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, co-written for WBM by David Baird, who conducted the study as a part of his senior project in the school's Agribusiness department and David Baird, study advisor, professor and chair of Cal Poly's Agribusiness department. The study looks at the willingness of consumers to accept wine in PET bottles before and after exposure to said bottles.

The second research report looks at a study into the impact package design has on consumer perception. The study was done by Keven Malkewitz, assistant professor of marketing at Oregon State University, and Ulrich R. Orth, professor of marketing at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in Germany.

Following these reports are short pieces detailing some of the latest packaging innovations, news and redesigns. 

             -- Mary-Colleen Tinney

PET Wine Bottles: Will Consumers Accept Them?

David Baird and Wayne Howard

The latest innovation in wine packaging is polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. These plastic bottles have several technical benefits over glass bottles--lower weight, less space, easier to recycle--but unless consumers perceive that a plastic bottle with a screw cap can contain good wine, plastic bottles won't be widely used. Or, as the head winemaker at a large "value wine" operation said, "We can't use screw tops; people would think we make cheap wine."

The Study

The study was designed to measure how open consumers are to buying wine in new PET bottles. Further, the study aimed to determine how these consumers perceive the value and quality of wine in PET bottles. We surveyed consumers in San Luis Obispo, California, at six different locations throughout the county. Our sample of 150 respondents may be small and from a geographically limited area, but a 2001 article in the San Luis Obpispo Tribune reported that San Luis Obispo is "...the best [general] test market in the nation."

Our average respondent drank wine 11 times per month and spent a little over $6 per bottle, not much different than the national median expenditure per bottle. The most important characteristics they look for when buying wine are good quality and reasonably priced: a low cost, good quality wine is perceived as a good value. In the past year, 80 percent had purchased wine with synthetic corks, 70 percent had purchased wine with a screw top but only one respondent had bought wine in a plastic bottle.

What Consumers Thought

When first asked about wine in a plastic bottle, less than 10 percent thought that they would be likely to buy it as reported in Table 1. Over half said it was not likely or not at all likely that they would buy wine in plastic. However, their responses changed as they learned more about the PET bottles.

After the initial question about the likelihood of buying wine in a plastic bottle, respondents were shown and allowed to hold a plastic wine bottle. After examining this bottle, respondents were again asked about the likelihood that they would buy wine in a plastic bottle. After examining the PET bottle, 34 percent of the respondents indicated they were "very likely" or "extremely likely" to buy wine in plastic, up from less than 10 percent before they were able to examine the bottle.

Lastly, respondents were shown a "concept board" listing several characteristics of plastic compared to glass as reported in Table 2. With this additional information about plastic bottles, 47 percent said they would be extremely or very likely to buy wine in a plastic bottle.

Next Steps for Wineries

The most significant result from our survey in this test market is that consumers need to be educated and informed about new packaging before they are willing to try it. Less than 10 percent of respondents said they were likely to try wine in a plastic bottle before they knew anything about the product. However, after examining a plastic bottle and being told about the benefits of PET, almost half said they would try wine packaged in the format.

The first brave winery to sell wine in plastic bottles would likely benefit from point-of-sale information displays and other educational programs. Consumers need to be informed about the positive characteristics of plastic bottles--such as environmental friendliness, good value wine at a reasonable price and portability--to overcome the negative impression about quality and looks. It may have taken 50 years for the Stelvin screw cap to be accepted, but 70 percent of respondents had bought wine in a screw cap in the past year.

Design of Wine Bottles Makes Significant Difference in Perception

Whether you want a wine to convey sophistication, ruggedness or even how much it costs, it has a lot to do with the way that wine is packaged and designed.

A study that appeared in the May issue of the Journal of Marketing surveyed more than 300 individuals and 125 design experts about many of the top brands of wine. The study was co-authored by Keven Malkewitz, assistant professor of marketing at Oregon State University, and Ulrich R. Orth, professor of marketing at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in Germany.

The study defined five distinct "holistic" packaging types: massive (with disproportionately large elements or typeface, such as the House Wine brand), contrasting (generally bright, high-contrast packaging, like Yellow Tail, with few traditional elements), natural (the "archetypical," traditional design frequently seen in Old World packaging, such as a light color background with a pen-and-ink drawing of the winery), delicate (these designs are muted, sleek and elegant, but do retain elaborate or flourish elements such as a winery crest, scalloped label edges or detailed borders) and nondescript (these designs are generally simple, clean, discreet and generally have few remarkable design elements, such as Fusee).

"A wine marketer can look at the five groups we've identified because those are visual competitors," said Malkewitz. "Whether it's also a Cabernet Sauvignon or not [for example], the visual competitor has become important as well. If you want to be less effective, don't match design with what's in the bottle. It's not a bad thing to be seen as cheap if you are selling wine to the masses. If it looks too expensive, people might think it is too expensive."

Consumers obviously have different reactions to the different types of bottle designs. "We know that with the high image background contrast, which is a bright color against a dark background, people instantly think that type of wine bottle is not very expensive," said Malkewitz. "If you add critters to that, people don't think it's very sophisticated."

The study also identified five different brand personality responses: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. Consumers assessed consumers' design-evoked impressions. Massive designs scored highly (meaning significantly greater than the mean) in excitement, but low (meaning significantly lower than the mean) in competence and sincerity. Contrasting designs scored highly in excitement and ruggedness, but low in competence and sophistication. Natural packaging scored highly in sincerity, competence and sophistication, but low in excitement and ruggedness. Delicate designs were high in competence and sophistication, but did not score significantly below the mean in any category. Nondescript designs, however, did not score significantly above the mean in any category, but were low in sincerity, excitement and ruggedness.

The researchers developed empirically based guidelines to assist managers in selecting or changing package designs to achieve the desired consumer response. For instance, exciting brands should have colorful designs with a lot of "contrast" to help images stand out. Brands wishing to convey "sincerity" should use natural designs (nature scenes, earth tones). Rugged brands might use large, bold fonts and labels and bottles that appear to be more massive.

Brand managers, continued Malkewitz, "have a vested interest in accurately conveying desired brand impressions. You would be surprised, though, how many companies don't understand what messages they are conveying with their designs. With this study we try to give stakeholders in the process a way to communicate, both with their customers and within their company. This gives designers and marketers a common language. The evidence we present in this paper strongly argues for the importance of examining package design as a means for generating brand impression," said Malkewitz.

Paper Sourced from Stone for Labels and Marketing Materials

Natural Source Printing (NSP), an FSC Certified and Carbon neutral source for printing, packaging and marketing materials, has introduced FiberStone™ Papers, a line of tree-free, low carbon footprint papers. NSP has been producing unit cartons, POP displays, casepacks, brochures, catalogs, annual reports and pressure-sensitive labels on the stone paper material.

According to the company, FiberStone papers have a carbon footprint that is at least one-third that of virgin paper and half that of recycled paper. Additionally, the manufacturer of FiberStone uses no water in processing, no trees, no chemicals and very little energy during the paper's production. The papers are made from limestone, an abundant resource.

Almaden, Inglenook Abandon Jugs

In June, The Wine Group announced that their newly-acquired Almaden and Inglenook brands will no longer be packaged in three-liter and four-liter glass jugs and will instead shift immediately to Bag-in-Box (BIB) packaging. The Wine Group described the move as environmentally-friendly as BIB packages weigh significantly less than glass and require far less carbon-based energy to transport.

Both brands were purchased in February 2008 from Constellation Wines U.S. According to The Wine Group, the boxed wine packaging for the brands will save 11 million pounds in packaging waste and reduce the brands' carbon footprint by 60 percent.

"The positive impact to the environment from making the shift to BIB packages will be huge, simply because the volume of these two brands combined account for 10 million cases of production," said David Kent, CEO of The Wine Group, in a statement. "We believe that making this change with two such venerable brands is an important step forward for the environment and for consumers who appreciate quality, value and the lessened impact on the environment."

Both Almaden and Inglenook have long histories that reach back to the earliest years of California's wine industry. Almaden was founded in 1852 when Etienne Theéplanted grapes near Los Gatos while Inglenook gained popularity after sea captain Gustave Niebaum purchased the Inglenook vineyard in Napa Valley in 1879.

BottleBuddie™ Reusable Wine Display Box

British company Clifford Packaging is releasing their BottleBuddie™ shipping/packaging box to the U.S. market. The six-bottle case is "retail-ready packaging," meaning that the same box used for shipping the wine to the store can also be used as the store display (either on the shelf or stacked on pallets or at aisle-ends). In a unique design element, the box also doubles as a collapsible and reusable bottle carrier for the consumer.

The BottleBuddie corrugated-cardboard box can be printed with brand images and information, including bar-coding and country-of-origin symbol. Also, the package has what the company calls "robust perforations" along the side of the case, allowing retailers to pull off the top of the box for bottle display.

Remaining along the center of the box is a divider with carrying-case handle, allowing consumers to easily lift and carry the six-bottle box. After being used, the carrying case can be folded flat for storage, then used again.

BottleBuddie fits on all existing packaging lines, including both hand and automated case-erectors, and can be tape- or glue-sealed. Fully-recyclable, a U.K. study found that the package reduces in excess of 35 percent material in the complete supply chain.

The case is already in use throughout the U.K. and Europe, Australia, South America and South Africa. Rowan Tinn of Clifford Packaging believes the packaging would be ideal for display in large-volume U.S. retailers, such as warehouse stores like Costco or "big-box" outlets such as Wal-Mart. For more information, visit: www.bottlebuddie.co.uk or email rowan@cliffordpackaging.com.

Zork Develops Sparkling Wine Closure

Australian company Zork is developing a version of its Zork closure for sparkling wines. The prototype is currently being trialed by several sparkling wine producers, and its commercial launch is expected in March/April 2009. As with the still wine version, there is a plastic tear-off strip that has to be removed before the bottle can be opened. However, the sparkling wine version has a longer plunger.

Dave Pahl, vice president of sales and marketing, told Wine Business Monthly that the new closure will avoid the problem of leakage that sometimes affects sparkling wine corks, causing the Champagne or sparkling wine to go flat. The Zork closure can also be used to reseal the bottle--an advantage over both a conventional mushroom cork and crown corks.

The closure will include a chip inside that will carry details of vintage, provenance, etc. It is also possible that it could be programmed to deliver a message like "Happy Birthday" when opened. "The Zork sparkling closure has been successfully tested to 1,200 kpa (kilopascals) while the industry standard is 800 kpa," said Pahl. He also claimed that the Zork sparkling closure was safer than a conventional cork because it doesn't fly out of the bottle.

New Look, Same Closure for Red Knot Wines

In other Zork news, Red Knot wines from Precept Brands has undergone a design change, though the brand is retaining the Zork closure for the bottle. Red Knot was launched in 2003 and later added a White Knot Chardonnay and a Pink Knot Rosé to the line. However, Precept found that the different-colored Knots were confusing consumers, so those extensions have been discontinued.

According to Alexandra Evans, Precept's vice president of marketing, there were several elements of the original label that have been retained. In addition to the red Zork closure, the "red knot" logomark against a black background remains, but the Red Knot wordmark was updated with a contemporary font treatment and changed from red to white to be more noticeable on the shelf.

The Red Knot wordmark is now placed at the top on all labels. Precept's team selected bottles for the Red Knot line with a deep punt, strong shoulders and a complementary height to integrate the Zork closure with the total package. A new label stock was selected, and the new label design format was approved.

Zork and Precept Brands are working together to promote the Red Knot brand and educate the public about the benefits of the Zork closure at the same time. The roll-out campaign, called "Vote ZORK 2008," was launched in the first quarter of 2008. Point-of-sale displays, posters and handouts ask buyers to cast their vote for Zork. Everyone who goes to Red Knot's website and votes will be entered in a drawing for a free trip to Australia.

Red Truck Wines Introduces New Screw Capped Packaging for Whites

Red Truck Wines, known for its Red Truck, White Truck and Pink Truck brands, has introduced new packaging for the White Truck line-up. Starting with the 2007 vintages of its White Blend, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio, the label will retain the iconic painting of a vintage white truck, but the new labels also include a torn edge interior frame for an overall look and feel that is more handcrafted and artistic. In a major shift, Red Truck's white wines also feature cream-colored screw caps instead of the traditional cork closures.

With the 2007 vintage, Red Truck also announced it is moving to a Santa Barbara appellation for its Chardonnay and putting a "call-out" on the label alerting consumers to the fact that the wine is "unoaked."

Guide Dogs for the Blind to Benefit from Dog House Brand Redesign

White Rocket Wine Company is re-launching its Dog House line of wines with a friendly new label. The company also reiterated its support for Guide Dogs for the Blind, a charitable organization that provides free guide dogs and training to the blind and visually impaired.

Guide Dogs for the Blind receives no government funding, depending entirely upon private donations. Since pledging support for Guide Dogs for the Blind in 2005, donating 50 cents for every bottle of wine sold, Dog House has raised over $214,000 to directly fund their efforts.

Dog House wines are sourced from California's North Coast and Central Coast wine-growing regions. The line, priced at $9.99, includes Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel. The new label features a "playful" illustration of a dog sitting outside a doghouse.

White Rocket is supporting the new package launch of Dog House with an array of point-of-sale materials, including a display rack, case card, bottle neckers and shelf talkers for stores. On premise, White Rocket is offering waitstaff education and feature cards, corkscrews with logos and three-liter Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon bottles. wbm