Last year, Richmond Hill opened a tetra pak wine bottling. Today, Toronto starts packaging plastic wine bottles.
Details are on the Globe and Mail website:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... dWine/home
or below
BEPPI CROSARIOL
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 16, 2007 at 9:01 AM EDT
Nicolas Sarkozy can call off the champagne at his Paris inauguration today. There's a new French wine that would make a more fitting tribute to the president-elect's economic-competitiveness platform (even if the man himself is an abstainer - the first non-drinking leader in the republic's history).
He won't even have to fiddle with foil wrappers or uncooperative corks. This one comes in a plastic bottle sealed with a screw cap.
It's called Yellow Jersey and it may be the most radical wine-packaging initiative since amphorae supplanted goat bladders around 1500 BC.
In fact, if the bold new format and publicity campaign behind Yellow Jersey are anything to go by, this is not just a wine, it's a message in a bottle. France, it wants to say, is back in the wine-marketing race.
Launched by the big Burgundy producer Boisset at a news conference in Toronto yesterday, the $14.95 brand - which includes a merlot, a pinot noir, a chardonnay and a sauvignon blanc - is being test-marketed in the experimental-packaging haven of Ontario for an unspecified time before a planned global rollout.
As bicycle-racing fans may have guessed, Yellow Jersey takes its name from the top worn by the leader in the Tour de France.
The minimalist label depicts a simple silhouette of a shirt at about the place you'd expect to see a sketch of a pretentious château. The words "Yellow Jersey" run in plain block letters just below.
Most unusual, though, is the plastic bottle, which has been moulded with an embossed pattern of tiny jerseys all around it, akin to the easy-grip rubber nubs sticking out from a Braun electric shaver.
"We wanted to have some fun with it, bring some more people in to drinking wine, like athletes and people who enjoy outdoor sports," Jean-Charles Boisset, president of Boisset, La Famille des Grands Vins, said in an interview on Monday before the launch.
While Australian producer Wolf Blass last year launched the world's first full-size plastic wine bottle (also in Ontario), Mr. Boisset says his new product comes with a few innovative twists. The sporty, non-slip bottle is intended to be refilled with water or juice. It's even sized to fit snugly in a bicycle's water-bottle holder.
"Why throw away something when you can reuse it?" he says.
Wine drinkers who don't cycle, Mr. Boisset adds, can still feel virtuous because the bottle is fully recyclable.
And they can take heart from the fact that the package weighs much less than glass, reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with transport.
Environment aside, Mr. Boisset concedes, there's a not-so-subtle innuendo to the name Yellow Jersey, which is likely to evoke memories of superstar U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong, who dominated the French race for seven years.
French winemakers have been badly hurt by international competition and have been struggling to get back on their feet. Or, should that be bicycle?
"I think people really perceived us as, I would hate to say snobs, but in a way [having a] lack of innovation," Mr. Boisset says. "We have a great lifestyle in France, but we convey it through very serious packaging, which is very intimidating and not necessarily exciting."
Byzantine labels that alienate consumers are just one problem. The country has been grappling with massive overproduction - much of it in the form of uncompetitive plonk - and a sharp decline in domestic wine consumption. That has led to widespread panic, particularly in the wine-dependent economies of Bordeaux and the vast southern swath known as Languedoc-Roussillon.
The situation is so dire in the Languedoc that in the past two years militant grape growers in balaclavas have torched railway cars and planted bombs in agriculture ministry buildings and businesses suspected of importing Chilean wine. Dozens of people, including prominent members of an activist group called Le comité régional d'action viticole (Winemakers' Regional Action Committee), have been arrested.
This year marks the centennial of a similar uprising in 1907, sparked by a vine plague known as phylloxera that wiped out virtually all the region's vines. Hundreds of thousands of farmers took to the streets in Montpellier and other cities across the south before the government of Georges Clemenceau sent in troops, resulting in five deaths. Signs have sprouted up over the past year proclaiming the ghostly return of the 1907 uprising's jailed leader, Marcellin Albert.
Curiously, the Yellow Jersey marketing strategy also reverberates with the political rhetoric of Mr. Sarkozy, a right-wing leader who prevailed in a hotly contested election earlier this month largely on promises of free-market economic reforms.
While on the campaign trail, Mr. Sarkozy paid the obligatory visits to various vineyards, notably in the hallowed appellations of Sancerre and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Among his pledges was a vow to relax wine advertising laws that have been a thorn in the industry's side for more than 15 years. The infamous Evin law of 1991 strictly prohibits enticements to buy or drink alcohol.
If any company can help point the French industry to a new, more competitive future, though, it may be Boisset. While headquartered in the hyper-traditionalist hamlet of Nuits Saint Georges in Burgundy, the family-controlled company has embraced innovation and offbeat marketing with the zeal of its most successful Australian counterparts.
Two years ago, it teamed up with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to become the first French winery to launch a premium, vintage-dated wine in a cardboard Tetra Pak. The $13-a-litre brand, French Rabbit, has since expanded to other provinces and countries, including the United States, Ireland and, just six weeks ago, France, where it goes by the English name. "The French love it," Mr. Boisset says.
Ironically, if Yellow Jersey is to take the sales lead in Ontario, it will first have to catch the tail, so to speak, of two other yellows from Australia. Yellow Tail shiraz from Casella Wines, the fastest-selling wine in world history, recently became the No. 1 selling brand in Ontario, surpassing the former leader, Yellow Label from Wolf Blass.
Both wines come in traditional glass bottles, but have won over buyers not just with consumer-friendly labels but also velvety smooth, fruit-forward flavours that stand in sharp contrast to angular and more acidic French wines.
Mr. Boisset, who says he has invested "quite a bit" in his new product, says his wines have the smooth, fruity flavours today's consumers are looking for and he is counting on a good showing, even if it takes a bit of patience.
"The yellow jersey is the symbol of the ultimate winner and the ultimate leader."
*****
Hello, yellow
Yellow Jersey gets its name from the shirt worn by the Tour de France leader, a convenient symbol for a product that aspires to a leadership position. But the colour yellow, shared by two hugely successful Australian wines - Yellow Tail and Yellow Label - also has powerful subconscious associations.
It's the colour of the sun, suggesting warmth and cheer, which never hurts when you're selling a lifestyle product like wine. Research shows yellow is especially popular with North American consumers, too, though precisely why is unclear.
Oh, and it's the colour of brainpower and optimism. We'll drink to that.
Beppi Crosariol
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