The whole package

Chenin vertical (photo credit: Katelyn Peil)

Some of the learning by doing when you have your own wine brand is being responsible for making ALL the bottling supply decisions. As a wine consumer and enologist, I had a pretty clear vision of the wine style I wanted for my chenin blanc. I had an idea of the smell and taste and the look of the wine itself. But wine branding and package design are pretty far outside my wheelhouse….

The market for domestic chenin basically tops out at my price point and OK remember I was exclusively selling my wine through distributors until 2020 when I started selling DTC. Wine Folly has a good post explaining the Three-Tier-System if you want to learn more about how slim my margins are. But like a truly naïve entrepreneur, I am wholly unwilling to compromise on certain bottling supplies I think indicate the quality of product inside the bottle. I want to show the customer I care…

At my production size, there is almost no economy of sale, I’m paying a premium for every damn thing.

LABELS: Investing in good label design made sense to me. In terms of the material, I knew I needed heavy high quality paper labels that wouldn’t float off in an ice bucket and that would adhere easily and correctly on the bottling line.

CORKS and CAPSULES: Guaranteed TCA free corks were a deal-breaker for me. TCA stands for 2,4,6-trichloroanisole. Sean Sullivan wrote a nice article about it. Every winemaker’s fear is that a customer tastes a wine tainted with TCA and they know they don’t like it but they fail to recognize that it’s the cork that’s at fault, the wine itself could be lovely. But before I can even draw that benzene ring, my potential customer is lost forever. Not today, TCA. Not for my brand.

Back 8 years ago, wine sales folks I trust advised me to use natural corks rather than screwcaps for my indie, boutiquey, new brand nobody’s heard of, cuckoo old vine chenin project even though screwcaps would have been a very economical way to avoid cork taint and my somm friends and bartenders that pour by the glass at restaurants tell me they actually love screwcaps. What say you? The first 5 vintages I used Portocork natural punch corks that were each individually screened for TCA first by human noses and then later as the technology became certified, by machine. I couldn’t afford to both pay an upcharge for these TCA free corks AND also get my logo printed on the sides so those first vintages are just end branded with the year.

My wine sales friends also told me my package looked “unfinished” without a tin capsule, but I couldn’t afford to get custom foils, so I used stock gold capsules with that cheesy cornucopia stamp I’ve never liked on top. The capsules come over on a container ship from Spain. In 2018, inspired by a lot of small and cool brands I was seeing with exposed corks, I decided that capsules are expensive and hard to recycle and that my customer was actually OK with no foils. Here’s a Wine Spectator article about this trend.

I had lab clients who loved DIAM and there are a lot of great brands from around the world that are evangelical about that product including Ramey in California, William Fevre Chablis and Pierre Peters Champagne. DIAM’s “technological cork closures” are guaranteed TCA free, more consistent in terms of oxygen transfer vs natural punch cork, less expensive, and I could get my ORR logo printed on the sides. You can recognize these corks because they look like a bulletin board - the tiny cork bark particles are cleaned with supercritical CO2 to remove any off-aromas and then agglomerated into a cylinder shape. DIAM is a French company that uses Portuguese cork bark at their factories in Spain, Portugal and France. In my experience DIAM corks are a little bit harder to cram back into the bottle if you’re trying to save some of the wine for tomorrow night but that’s really the only negative thing I can say about the elasticity. Levi Dalton interviewed the founder of DIAM on his podcast. Super interesting.

GLASS BOTTLES: Over the years I have switched glass vendors many times which has been frustrating. I want to buy local as much as possible but minimum order quantities, the discontinuation of glass molds, and customer service issues are no joke. Fun fact: I’ve had to switch to another new bottle for the 2021 bottling, but the good news is that it’s made in the USA and the subtle changes in the bottle shape are really only visible to me, my bottling line technician, and now to you if you compare drip lips, shoulders and the punt dimensions across my vintages.

For more information check out this article from Wine Business Monthly.