Bottle Blarney

[Rebel Rose]

I see it from time to time, and I am sure you do, too . . . the outrageous statements made on some back labels about the quality of the wine or the "family" tradition.

In today's SFGate, we are asked: What does 'family winery' really mean?

In other words, almost one of every six wine buyers is a sucker for labels like this one on the side of a 5-liter box of NV Franzia White Zinfandel: "A new beginning -- Teresa Franzia, my grandmother, planted her first vineyard along the road to Yosemite in 1906. Her family survived Prohibition by selling these grapes to home winemakers back East. When Prohibition ended, my father and his six brothers and sisters rebuilt the winery brick by brick, barrel by barrel."

What the Franzia label history omits is that some members of the family engineered the sale of the business to the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of New York in 1973. Coke of New York later sold Franzia to the Wine Group, which ranks third in total U.S. wine sales according to Wine Business Monthly.

Other wineries named in the article include Gallo, Concannon, and R.H. Phillips.

How many, and what types of wine buyers do you think are truly affected by this sort of claim? What other gag tags have you seen on wine labels?

[jsolomon]

Holy cow... I would posit that most of the wine-buyers I know suffer from this.

But, in our current world marketplace of a supermarket, where it is more uncommon to find artisanal cheese than it is to find cheese from Ginormoco, Your Neighborhood Transnational, (made in Curdistan), should we really be surprised?

When I step back and think about this, I find a lot of analogies between this "family wine" on the label, and all of the farmers and ranchers I know whose blood, sweat, and tears go into the Kellogg's Cornflakes, Old Home Bread, and Certified Angus beef.

On one hand, it's very disappointing that we have such a distance between the producer and the marketplace--financially and supply speaking, not necessarily miles. But, if they put food in mouths (or wines past gums) can we condemn them thoroughly?

Edit to add: And, where does that put me, who is currently fermenting wine from a kit? That is certainly more faceless than even Franzia (but less than Thunderbird, or MadDog).

Edited January 26, 2006 by jsolomon (log)

[JohnL]

I recall visiting the Rabbit Ridge winery in Sonoma a while back

My wife and I thought-what a charming little operation. Turns out Rabbit Ridge may make charming wines but they are far from "little"--being a fairly large company in the wine world.

I believe that a lot of wine marketing is of limited value--people may try a bottle based on some marketing effort--a family run tale or a cute animal etc--but of they don't like the wine in the bottle they will not return. Let's face it --we are talking about "lower end" wines here for the most part.

Also worth noting is that there is a reverse effect. that is, a winery like Gallo has a hard time selling a higher end wine under the Gallo name--they do make some very nice wines--Gallo Sonoma for eg.

Most wines from Australia are made by a handful of companies--it is a fact of life that once small operations are sold to larger conglomerates as entrepreneurs and families "cash out." Part of a cycle--as some cash out, others start new small family ventures and so on.

Some very fine products are made by big companies--Maytag Blue cheese is an example.

The key question is-do large companies "tinker" with the products they take over?

Maybe the best example (non wine) is Haagen Dasz ice cream--I have been waiting for this product to be 'ruined" by the mega companies that have been buying and selling this once "artisinal effort"--so far, to my amazement--it has not been "tinkered" with.

[Brad Ballinger]

In other news, Lincoln has been shot.

Are any of us truly surprised that marketers will do what they can to make a buck?

[jsolomon]

Dewey wins, too!

It's not just marketers. There are wine producers who get in and decide its not all its cracked up to be, so they cash out when they are burned out.

There are as many justifications as there are consumers. Granted, it's nice to get the fuzzy feeling associated with being a small (i.e. "good) guy. You have the image of the majestic salmon swimming upstream in a triumph over adversity.

But, it does boil down to one major reason, IMO. It is much easier to tug at heartstrings in a grocery store, or wine shop, than it is to engage the consumer in the center and left side of the bell curve in a description of the wine.

Cute sells to more people than objective descriptions sell to. That's why Budweiser uses attractive people and horseys.

[Rebel Rose]

I think it's interesting that so many really large wine production companies want to be perceived as "small, family run" wineries when they clearly are not.

Also, a number of large winery/vineyard operations claim to be "organic" or "biodynamic" but they don't mention the huge crews of itinerant labor that they use to hoe weeds and "hand turn" their compost. Or the occasional farmworker accidents involving large machinery, like the death of 37-year-old Maria Laticia Fonseca Quintero, who was run over by a harvester trailer while she was hand picking Chardonnay at night in Woodbridge.

I detest companies that misrepresent themselves, whether or not I enjoy the product. I think Horizon milk has the best taste of the milk available in our local stores, but I stopped buying Horizon milk and eggs when it became evident (as discussed here) that the company was misreprensenting itself.

Horizon Milk Feedlot Dairy - Masquerading as an Organic Farm?

As demand for organic milk has skyrocketed, investors have built large industrial farms mimicking what has become the standard paradigm in the conventional dairy industry. "It is our contention that you cannot milk 2000–6000 cows and offer them true access to pasture  . . ." said Kastel.

"Real organic farms have made great financial investments in converting to pasture-based production – enhancing the nutritional properties of the milk and for enhancing animal health – while it appears that these large corporate-dominated enterprises are happy just to pay lip service to required organic ethics."

And something very similar is happening in wine production and marketing.

[ed davis]

Another type of bottle blarney is the constant creation of new "brands" by the same old wineries. Gallo, in particular, constantly changes their brands in order (in my opinion) to keep selling overpriced swill to suckers. Remember Gossamer Bay. Well after most casual wine consumers discovered that this was noxious crap, the brand disappears. Now we have Redwood Creek and Frei Brothers. And when consumers discover that those brands are plonk, Gallo will come out with two or three new ones. Each of the brands takes off with ubiquitous advertising and then disappears into limbo.

The purpose of brands originally was to allow consumers to recognize the products they liked so that they could purchase them again. Thus we have all kinds of laws that protect the sanctity of brand names. Now, however, it seems that some companies use brands to fool consumers; they use them as a way to disguise product that consumers already know they don't like.