Monthly Archives: November 2009

Wine DJ App Combines Wine & Music

Wine DJ App Combines Wine & Music

There are quite a few wine apps out there for choosing a bottle but the Liberty School WINE DJ app is a unique program combining music and wine. The application builds a playlist of “Music to Match Your Spirits” based on mood, setting and which Liberty School wine is being consumed. The app is available for download free via Apple’s app store and on Apple’s iTunes.

After launching the app, users are prompted to choose a Liberty School wine (cabernet, chardonnay, etc.) and are shown a series of sliders to adjust variables that correspond with their situation to help determine the mood for the music. With music sourced from GrooveShark.com, the potential for unique playlists are extensive. The app comes with information on Liberty School wines including tasting notes and a map feature that shows the nearest retailers who carry the wine.

The WINE DJ Liberty School iPhone app is compatible with several wines within the Hope Family Wines portfolio including Liberty School, Candor, and Treana. I tested this out a few weeks ago and it’s pretty fun. The best part is that if you don’t like what is playing you can always fiddle with the sliders and get more music.

By Deidre Woollard | Source :: www.luxist.com

Ferrari Premium Vintage Cuvee

FERRARI Riserva-Lunelli bottle 1

FERRARI Riserva-Lunelli box 2

The leading Italian Brand Advisory and Strategic Design consultancy RobilantAssociati has created new visual identity and packaging for a premium vintage cuvée Ferrari Riserva Lunelli, the first wine label of Ferrari family.

Riserva Lunelli has been fermented and aged in large casks made of Austrian oak, taking in the rich taste and aroma of ‘luxury’ Chardonnay.

The designers were tasked to highlight the premium high-end positioning of Ferrari brand, its heritage and rich traditions as well as exclusive Italian style of ‘royal simplicity’.

The elegant outer box with the initials RL – Reserve Lunelli – printed directly on the bottle as well, summarizing the refined image of Italian luxury and style.

RobilantAssociati will continue partnership with Cantine Ferrari, working on other SKUs of the range: the Sparkling line for large retailers, lines Perl and Maximum Ho.Re.Ca for the channel, and the exclusive Ferrari Black Perlè launched last season.

Source :: www.popsop.com

Therapy Vineyards : Test Your Mind

therapy vineyards

The Brandever creative agency has developed a great design for Naramalta Bench’s Therapy Vineyards. To make the bottles really unforgettable and luring, the designers put these famous Rorschach inkblots which are used in psychiatry when the patient’s problem is being determined.

To promote a product by drawing parallels between it and mind problems is a very risky thing, but this time it does work.

The Therapy Vineyards are located in the vineyards and mountains of the Naramata Bench in Canada. The premium wine in bottles featuring various inkblots will definitely turn to be a hit of sales.

With Therapy Vineyards you are encouraged to explore your imagination and answer the silent question: “What does this remind you of?” After a glass of ultra premium wine you’ll find what to say.

Source :: www.popsop.com

Kendall-Jackson Offers Customised Wine Service

Kendall Jackson Offers Customised Wine Service

For the wine lover who has everything, popular California winery Kendall-Jackson has a new service that is a step above their usual offerings.

For $30,000 Kendall-Jackson winemaster Randy Ullom will spend three days with a wine lover, doing extensive wine tastings with them, learning their preferences and creating an ideal customized blend based on their tastes and personality.

The purchaser will later receive a case of 12 bottles of the wine with a personalized label. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to charity.

Those interested in the program should email for more information at customWine@kjmail.com.

Source :: www.luxist.com

Wine by numbers, with a digital content twist

Wine By Numbers

We’ve seen several innovations at the intersection of wine and technology, including Aromicon’s “virtual taste search engine,” which we featured just last week. Dutch startup 94wines is now bringing a new technological twist to the table, so to speak, by offering a line of numbered and colour-coded wines that can be personalized with digital content.

Launched a week ago, 94wines offers a line of French wines in which each variety is indicated by a number and a bottle colour rather than a name linked to its maker, vintage or region. Consumers begin by taking a short quiz of six questions regarding their likes and dislikes. That, in turn, produces their personal WineID, which can then be used to guide their choices from among the company’s series of wines. The use of numbers and colours makes wine preferences easy to remember, while personal ID profiles allow friends to see each other’s preferences for gift-giving purposes.

Perhaps even more interesting, however, is that—much the way Enthusem allows consumers to create printed greeting cards with digital attachments—94wines customers can attach electronic content to any bottle of wine. Upon placing an order, they simply upload a text, photo or video file (one is allowed per bottle of wine), which 94wines stores on its server. 94wines then converts that content into a QR code, which it attaches to the bottle. (QR codes are included on all 94wines bottles, so if consumers don’t upload their own content, the company includes a standard message instead.)

Recipients can view the attached content using their mobile phone’s camera or by entering the code at 94wines.com. There’s also a free 94wines application for iPhones that includes an advanced QR reader along with the WineID test, an overview of the 94Wines assortment and the ability to view the profiles of friends. Per-bottle pricing at 94wines ranges between EUR 5.99 and EUR 9.99, with no extra charge for personalization.

Another shining example of the OFF=ON trend, 94wines currently delivers primarily within the Netherlands, with delivery elsewhere in Europe by request only. One to partner with or emulate for personalization-happy oenophiles in other parts of the world…?

Source :: www.springwise.com

Volute Wine

Volute Wine

Don’t expect the worldwide wine market to dry up any time soon. In spite of economic conditions, consumption is not expected to take a sharp drop, although consumers may be switching to brands that cost less. World wine production should fall about 5 percent in 2009, according to a recent report from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture. World wine exports are forecast to be down 3 percent from the previous year.

While there are a vast number of wines available, they are almost always packaged in multi-serving glass bottles. But in the past few years, there has been a slow, sure move toward “single serving” wine packaging. The thinking is that wine drinkers with active lifestyles might want to take along smaller-sized containers rather than lug entire bottles. Imagine the convenience when backpacking, bicycling or picnicking. Single servings are also good for marketing—winemakers can encourage consumers to sample different wines without committing to purchase a whole bottle.

It’s easy enough for winemakers to create diminutive versions of their glass bottles, of course. Those have been on the market for a decade, but they are not easily portable and they can break. Still, both winemakers and consumers have always looked at glass as essential in the packaging of wine. That is, until now.

Some of the recent single-serving wine packaging is downright innovative. Target (yes, the retailer) offers Wine Cubes, square packages containing four single servings of wine. Each unit has the distinct feeling of an adult juice-pak. Winemaker Francis Ford Coppola has introduced two packaging breakthroughs: single servings in foil-sealed glasses that look like tumblers and single servings of its Sofia brand in chic pink and silver mini-cans with a plastic straw attached to the side—again reminiscent of a child-size juice drink.

But the most imaginative and apparently eco-friendly single-serving wine comes from Volute, a company started last year. Volute packages its single servings in a bottle—but it is a unique aluminum bottle, elegantly shaped and with trendy graphics, including color-coded designations for red, white and rosé varieties.

Read more…

Guglielmo Winery

Guglielmo Winery 1

Guglielmo Winery 2

Guglielmo Winery 3

Guglielmo Winery 4

Guglielmo Winery 5

Guglielmo Winery 6

“Established in 1925, Guglielmo Winery in Morgan Hill was in need of a brand overhaul. They approached Autograph Creative to take a holistic approach and provide brand consultancy with the aim of better positioning themselves within the industry.

The process required an intimate approach and complete transparency about their current positioning and where they needed to be in the future. This detailed approached led Autograph to accentuating their biggest asset – their heritage – and adding a considered modernity to the three brands of wines.

Emile’s Table Wine became Emile’s Heritage, their mid-tier Villa Emile was changed to TRÉ Cellars and the flagship Guglielmo Winery Private Reserve became Guglielmo Private Reserve, Est. 1925.

Naming, identity, packaging, marketing materials and web design were all part of this holistic approach. Following the successful relaunch of Guglielmo, Autograph Creative has left a lasting impression within the ever crowded spirits sector.”

Source :: Lovely Package

Wine search engine uses animation to visualize aromas

Wine Search Engine

Billed as a ‘virtual taste search engine’, Aromicon lists thousands of wines categorised by every imaginable detail. Wines can be browsed by region, grape variety or food pairing, as well as searched by keyword. There’s also the option to browse according to taste, featuring a huge range of subtleties to satisfy the requirements of the most practiced palette—everything from ‘kiwi’ and ‘butter’, to peculiarities like ‘animal’ and ‘blood’ (luckily you can opt to exclude those).

Although the site is in German, it’s almost navigable by its icons alone—hence the name. And in a visually innovative twist, a short animation graphically displays a wine’s unique blend of flavours, showing berries, chocolate, pipes, etc swirling around in a glass. The concept is a spin-off from the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, and features a vintage revenue model: the site essentially functions as a fully-featured affiliate sales portal linking to several German wine merchants. One to serve up for wine-lovers who don’t speak German, or to partner with if you’re in the wine business?

Source :: Springwise