Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/172581
COVER STORY Best Bottle award, Meier's Sinful Sangria is encircled by graceful, scarlet-nailed hands in a sensuous, attention-grabbing grasp. The full-wrap effect is accomplished with a PVC-coated bottle, according to Mary Beth Dunn, exterior relations manager for Meier's. "The material is PVC, steam-shrunk onto a glass bottle. This emulated the effect of a full bottle decoration." Sinful Sangria is a new brand developed after Meier's was acquired about two years ago by Luxco, a spirits specialist. Unfortunately neither company can measure how much impact the package has on sales. From a branding standpoint, Dunn said, "Working with the entire surface area of a bottle allows one to tell a brand story in three dimensions. I'm not saying this cannot be done with a single-face label, but being able to utilize more surface area on a bottle means you can expand the ways you reach your target consumer. "From a manufacturing standpoint, being able to bypass conventional labeling allows us to bottle more and waste less," she added. Designing the package with Jeff Schmidt and Robert Jeffreys took about 10 months from inception to completion, Dunn said. Luxco had previous experience with this packaging technique, used on the Yago Sangria from its spirits division. "We look at any way we can bring added value to a category. I feel that this method of labeling is inventive and fun, and would love to use it again," Dunn commented. It's not about the means, she said, "as much as it is about branding and creating something completely different." Anchor Glass supplied the bottle; Belmark the shrink sleeve. The screwcap comes from G3. The sleeve is applied as a cylinder and then steam heated until it contours the bottle, Dunn said. The UV protective coating helps to preserve the wine, and the sleeve is made of 100% recyclable plastic. Meier's also shares this technology with private bottling clients through its Business Services division. The full-wrap PVC decoration of Meier's Sinful Sangria (far left) snagged BTI's Best Bottle award, while Pomar Junction adopted a special package worthy of its 'exceptional' late-harvest Viognier (above). Dunn said of the packaging competition: "The BTI program helps give visibility. We appreciate being recognized. Luxco/Meier's believes in best practices and learning from the rest of industry. It's a core competence. "Sometimes you have to innovate." Pomar Junction's boss look Pomar Junction Vineyard & Winery in the Paso Robles AVA of California is smaller (6,000 cases per Wines Vines Analytics) and younger (founded 2002) than Meier's, but already it has earned a big reputation. The winery's bottle for its 2010 Reserve Late Harvest Viognier took BTI's award for Best Embossed Label. While we expected to see an elaborate embossed paper label, BTI defines "embossed" differently: This is in fact a screen-printed bottle that reflects its $85 per 500ml bottle price. Co-designed by Denise McClean of Mode Communications and Pomar Junction managing partner Matt Merrill, it also employs a wrap-around effect. Merrill told BTI, "We had heard from our winemaking team that they thought they had an exceptional late-harvest Viognier that needed to be separate from our regular late-harvest Viognier. I knew that I needed to have an exceptional silkscreened bottle to match the amazing wine." The wine recently earned Best in Class for the White Dessert Wines at the Central Coast Wine Competition. Of 94 cases originally produced, only 50 cases remain. "Since it is such a special wine, we have not tried to sell this outside the tasting room. It is 95% sold through the tasting room," Merrill said. "We have another lateharvest Viognier called Amber Moonlight. The only reason we have this wine is because the harvest crew started picking and leaving the botrytis-affected grapes out of the picking bins. So we told them we did indeed want to include those clusters. We processed the grapes separately and kept them separate throughout the entire process. Informed by the winemaker that the botrytis-infected wine was extremely spe- cial, Merrill said, "I was actually somewhat disappointed. This meant that I had to figure out a whole new label that would be different than the other label." There is no difference in label approval time (for screenprinting). You simply treat the image the way as you would a paper label." —Lisa Erlich, Purple Wine Co. Packaging design is always time consuming. "I wanted to create something that was as special as the wine, so I knew that it would take some time. I believe we had known around January of 2011 that we were going to bottle this lot with a different label, so I used that time to work on the label and let it evolve," Merrill recalled. She worked with McClean, former tasting room manager at Meridian Winery, who is conveniently keeping her hand in the industry in by working Thursdays in the Pomar Junction tasting room. "If the tasting room was slow, I would go over ideas with her, and she would have something for me for the next week based on my input," Merrill said. Pomar Junction takes its name and branding image from its home base in Templeton, Calif., a historic railroad hub. "My original idea was to have the train coming at you and wrap around the bottle. I wanted to utilize the possibilities of silk-screening the label, but Denise was having trouble making it happen and came up with having a train on the back that can be seen on the front," he said. Everything about the bottle evokes quality. "We used different color inks—black, gray and a 22-karat gold. I thought the gold would help make it pop more and even reflect back some light," Merrill said. The bottle, imported from France by TricorBraun WinePak, is appropriately named "Seduction." Adam Peltier of Peltier Glassworks did the screen printing and helped finish the artwork. The closure is, Merrill said, "The highest grade cork that MA Silva produces for this wine and all of our reserve-level wines." This precisely designed package makes use of the cork to reinforce branding. "The capsule is a wax treatment. We decided to get a gold that matched the gold Win es & Vin es O C TO b er 20 13 33