Competition is fierce in the wine business. With so many wineries and wine brands making so much wine, the consumer has virtually endless choice.
Why should they pick your wine over the thousands of others available in their market?
Wineries should do whatever they can to stand out from the crowd, but the opposite is quite often the case. Many wine producers go to great lengths to fit in, whether that’s according to the cues of their category or to perceived consumer expectations.
Header image copyright: Domaine Clarence Dillon
Fitting in is failing: Remarkable marketing in the wine business
As a salesperson, I understand the logic of wanting your wine to fit in. Trade buyers expect Pomerol to look like Pomerol, so you stick a Maltese cross on your label. A monopoly buyer in Canada or Sweden expects Chilean Cabernet to cost a certain amount, so you price yours accordingly. It’s a buyer’s market, so you play within the buyer’s rules. I get it.
As a marketer, I think there’s a better move. In Purple Cow, Seth Godin says that “in a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing.”
If you’re interested in marketing and don’t know Seth Godin, this book will give you a good sense of what he’s about. The essential thesis is that the only way for a business to grow (if not survive) is through remarkable marketing.
“Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not slapping on marketing as a last-minute add-on, but understanding that if your offering itself isn’t remarkable, it’s invisible.”
Seth Godin, “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable”
If you’re happy for your wine to fit in, I wish you luck. If you’ve had enough of that and want to do something unique, special, or remarkable, stick with me.
6 ways to make your wine stand out
You don’t need to look too hard to find remarkable marketing in the wine business. “Remarkable” does not necessarily mean high-end or fine wine, though there is often overlap.
I’ve identified six ways that wineries have produced what I consider to be remarkable wines. There are more, to be sure.
1. Make wine in a remarkable place
Some vineyard sites are inherently remarkable, all but destined to make great wine. Unlike many consumer products, wine is almost always marketed as coming from somewhere. That could be as broad as “France” or “Italy”, or as specific as a named climat in Burgundy or MGA in Barolo.
Remarkable wines tend to come from geographically specific places. Vineyards such as these boast unique natural factors that yield top quality grapes and, ultimately, wine. In wine speak, these wines are representative of their terroir, which is to say that they reflect a distinct sense of place that could not be replicated elsewhere.
Henschke’s Hill of Grace wouldn’t be the same if it were produced in Côte Rotie, nor could Guigal’s La Mouline be recreated in the Eden Valley. Pétrus would not be Pétrus if it were produced elsewhere on the Pomerol plateau, let alone in another part of Bordeaux.
This is one of the more difficult ways to make remarkable wine. If you don’t already have a remarkable vineyard site, you may struggle with this approach. Exceptional vineyard land costs a lot of money, and is generally not for sale anyway. Transactions of truly special sites are rare, as is the sort of wine business with the requisite cash to buy them.
2. Make wine in a non-remarkable place
Other wines can be remarkable because the place they come from is not.
David Llewellyn is the proprietor of Lusca Vineyard in my native Dublin, Ireland. My home country has a deserved reputation for world-class whiskey and craft beer, but its climate is not favourable for winegrowing. Wine is not Llewellyn’s primary crop, and he is better known for his apples, cider, perry and vinegar. Nonetheless, he is a pioneer in Irish wine, and his tiny production is quite remarkable.
English wine is very good and getting better. The country’s sparkling wines are gaining the recognition they deserve, though there’s a lot of work to be done yet. The English countryside is emerging as a very special terroir in its own right. Not quite so special, but quite remarkable, is London Cru, the city’s first urban winery.
It’s unlikely that winemaking will take off to any great extent in any of these places, making the few outliers quite remarkable indeed. If you are looking to create a wine worth talking about, the novelty of doing so in a non-wine region will certainly help. Keep in mind, however, that there may be one or several good reasons why it’s not a wine region in the first place.
3. Revisit history
Some prominent winemakers have looked to the past in crafting something remarkable today.
Liber Pater is remarkable because it’s the world’s most expensive wine, but there’s more to it than that. Founder-vigneron Loic Pasquet has cleverly built his wine’s mystique around the idea that it tastes as though from another era – as Bordeaux used to. The Bordeaux vineyard of 1855 was wholly different from that of today, as were its wines. Pasquet’s stated mission is to find that historical taste of Bordeaux, telling Decanter that his discerning customers “want to appreciate the original fine wine of Bordeaux…I’m doing what needs to be done to protect our heritage.”
Case in point, the Liber Pater vineyard near Landiras doesn’t look much like anything else in Bordeaux today: it’s densely planted with ungrafted vines of forgotten old grape varieties like Petite Vidure and Tarnay. He’s published a book on the subject if you’re curious.
In South Africa, Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance is a relatively recent revival of a wine first produced over 300 years ago. Château Palmer’s Historical XIXth Century Wine revives an old tradition which saw red Bordeaux “strengthened” with Syrah from the northern Rhône.
If you are making wine somewhere, look at the region’s history. How does today’s wine compare with that of 100 – or 1,000 – years ago? What could you learn from the past?
4. Be patient: Building a wine business takes time
The wine business is a long-term game, and to do it right requires patience. Time is money, however, so most producers don’t have the luxury of being patient forever. Sooner or later, the board of directors or the shareholders will want to see a return on investment (ROI).
This probably means a sacrifice somewhere, whether that’s in releasing your wine to the market before you think it’s ready, increasing yields or lowering costs somewhere along the way. For the most part, these are sensible business decisions. They’re also unlikely to yield remarkable wine.
Harlan Estate is a remarkable wine. Robert Parker said it “might be the single most profound red wine made not just in California, but in the world.” It’s remarkable for its perfect scores, scarcity and stratospheric price. More remarkable than all of that is the patience and long-term vision of its founder, Bill Harlan.
What makes Harlan Estate so special?
Known for having a 200-year plan for his winery, Harlan eschews the ROI metric for one of his own design:
[T]he plan I created was not for a Return on Investment but a Return on Life…Once we change our perspective on time and have more clarity of purpose, it makes it a lot easier to have patience, and that is partly the foundation on which the Estate was built.
Bill Harlan, quoted in Harlan Estate: The Next Wine Dynasty from Deutsche Wealth
For some perspective, briefly consider the timeline: Harlan bought what would become his eponymous property in 1984. The first three vintages produced, 1987, 1988 and 1989, were never released. The first commercial vintage was 1990, and it wasn’t released until 1996. Harlan waited twelve years between planting the vineyard and releasing a wine. That’s an awful lot of cost to bear before seeing any return whatsoever.
Clearly, Harlan made such decisions with the long term in mind and had the capital to do so. As a result, the top-tier quality of Harlan Estate and the wider Harlan family portfolio is in no doubt.
It’s an extreme example, and few others in the wine business could consider it. In more practical terms, you could review your decision making on vineyard planting and replanting, barrel and bottle ageing, and commercial release of your wines. What would you do if you could be more patient? What would happen to your wine as a result?
5. Rethink your packaging
Some of the world’s most remarkable wines are known as much for their packaging as for what’s in the bottle. The wine business is a business after all, and smart wine marketers have long recognised the power of packaging in building strong brands.
Bottle shape can be remarkable. Mateus Rosé is a classic example of how you can use distinctive packaging to make a product stand out. I’ve never tasted Mateus, though I can spot its flask shape bottle from a mile away. Though not a fine wine, it is – or was, at the very least – a remarkable one.
Les Grands Chais de France’s megabrand JP Chenet owes much of its success to its unique bottle shape, nicknamed “Joséphine”. Its slanted neck and stubby body easily stand apart in the rather crowded category of IGP-level French varietals.
Proprietary bottle design is not the preserve of entry-level brands. Maison Brotte’s La Fiole du Pape is a standout within the Châteauneuf-du-Pape category for its distorted shape and frosted glass effect. Rioja’s Faustino also uses a frosted glass effect on a number of its wines, with Faustino I probably the most distinctive.
You can find remarkable packaging at the very top end of the wine business, too. Louis Roederer’s Cristal is unique in the Champagne category for its clear glass bottle and its UV-protective wrapping paper. Château Haut-Brion is remarkable for lots of reasons. One of the more subtle ones is its unique bottle shape.
No matter your price point and positioning, distinctive packaging can help your wine stand out. Again, there are practical considerations: Unique bottle shapes and sizes call for bespoke bottling solutions and production lines, and those costs add up.
The entry to the wine business of new and innovative packaging suppliers, such as Garçon Wines with its flat bottles, is a development worth following.
6. Play with pricing
Pricing is a hugely complex area of the wine business. Setting wine prices is a balancing act, and a difficult one at that. It’s probably not surprising, then, that wineries tend to price their products according to established category norms.
What happens when a producer decides to step outside those conventional price brackets? Things start to get remarkable.
Liber Pater’s most recent release was for €30,000 a bottle, making it more or less the world’s most expensive wine. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s top wine goes for somewhere around €14,000. These prices are far beyond what most of us could – or would want to – pay, but these wines aren’t designed for most of us.
Remarkable pricing can go the other way, too. Charles Shaw, better known as Two Buck Chuck, is remarkable because it’s so cheap. The merits of this kind of pricing strategy are debatable, and a race to the bottom doesn’t really help anybody in the long run.
If you are going to experiment with price, keep in mind that nobody likes to feel ripped off. There is a difference between price and value, and if your customers aren’t getting value, they won’t be your customers for long.
3 more remarkable wines
- Opus One is a remarkable joint venture between two industry leaders, Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild. Who in the wine world would you join forces with, if you could? What’s holding you back?
- RIDGE Vineyards is remarkable for the level of transparency in its labelling. Are you telling your consumers everything you’d like to? If not, why not?
- Tenuta San Guido’s Sassicaia is remarkable because it broke the rules of its appellation, creating a whole new category in the so-called Super Tuscans. What could you achieve if you didn’t have to follow the local rules and regulations? Why don’t you give it a go?
Ready to be remarkable?
If you want your wine to stand out, you may find some inspiration here. Don’t just copy what these people are doing, though. Instead, look at the philosophies and behaviours behind these remarkable wines. Figure out how you could apply them to what you do, and go from there.