Wine gets wild and crazy – Vintners court young drinkers with sexy, splashy marketing; Dude Shiraz and Babe Chardonnay – Deborah Ball and Christopher Lawton, Wall Street Journal, Apr 24 2003.
Wine has such a rich image of restraint, status, affluence and good taste. Can it survive brash packaging and racy names? For some, the first step is to shake off this image. In the UK, Pernod Ricard’s Jacob’s Creek sparked a new trend when it became the exclusive advertiser for hot TV show ‘Friends’; Diageo PLC’s Blossom Hill did the same with ‘Will and Grace’. BRL Hardy, producer of Banrock Station and other wines, sponsored London’s Mardi Gras and Gay Pride parades.
The average age of a Bordeaux wine drinker is 35–40 in the US, and around 45 in the UK, but the region’s vintners association would like to target drinkers as young as 25. Thus, fashion shows in LA, London and Paris are being backed and wine tasting courses, dubbed ‘Wine Uncorked’, for law or business students at Ivy league universities are being organised. Sainsbury’s supermarket chain has promoted a wine called Babe Chardonnay, followed by Dude Shiraz in the UK. Even WeightWatchers markets a diet wine in the UK aimed at younger calorie-conscious female drinkers. Traditional channels are being eschewed by wine groups. Sit-down dinners, the mainstay of building wine cachets are being replaced by ‘wine raves’ as well as tastings in trendy nightclubs and bars. Wine groups are starting to treat wine in a way that is brash, open and loud. The key is to get young people when they start going to pubs and clubs. However, the wine industry is just scratching the surface in terms of making it relevant to younger drinkers. Some attempts have fallen flat: Hardy wines made a ‘Wicked Wines’ line, bottled in four versions – Lust, Greed, Envy and Flirt. It sold well when first launched in Australia, but eventually wore off. Likewise, a diet wine, Swaying Willow, was also discontinued.
Wine groups are trying to bend their products to suit an audience at the risk of losing them when they graduate into the next age group. Vintners badly need to expand their reach. Wine consumption in the US has grown nearly 100% in the past 30 years, but is heavily skewed toward those over 35 years old. Only 25% of wine purchasers in the US are between 21 and 34, and 21 to 24 year-olds are twice as likely as the average buyer to spend $20 or more on a bottle of wine.
In the wine business, age has long been considered a good thing, but producers are seeking younger vintages – among their customers. There are dangers and risks in this strategy; no one knows how core wine consumers will react to razzle-dazzle marketing.
TALKING ITOVER AND THINKING IT THROUGH