[W]e’ve seen wines and beers packaged for various target audiences, including women and gay men, but recently we came across a slightly different kind of example. Based in New Zealand, Ritzling is an effort to rethink classic Riesling wines for modern tastes and reformat them in a new way.

Aiming to create a new kind of beverage, Ritzling has taken Riesling wine and added carbonation along with a twist of citrus, resulting in a blend it calls “pure happiness.” With richly artistic labeling and packaged in 250mL bottles, the beverage is reportedly served in a manner similar to Mexican beer, with a slice of lemon or lime in the neck of the bottle.

There are countless ways to make a classic product fresh and new again, but Ritzling’s take on Riesling seems uniquely innovative. One to help introduce at bars, restaurants and summer picnics in your part of the world?

Source :: Springwise

It's always inspiring to see a company expand in ways that reflect both sustainability and good synergy, and Spanish winemaker Group Matarromera recently did just that. With a history that includes more than 20 years of producing award-winning wines, the company has now launched a cosmetics line that makes use of the antioxidant-rich grape skins that are left over by the wine-making process.

Launched this past summer, Matarromera's Esdor cosmetics brand taps into the powerful polyphenols so abundant in the skins of red grapes. Using a patented process, the company extracts those antioxidant-rich compounds — it calls the result Eminol — and blends them with other natural ingredients to create its nourishing cream, moisturizer cream and eye contour products. Esdor cosmetics are all made with 85 percent natural compounds, including 7.5 percent Eminol and other ingredients including musk oil, caviar extract, jojoba oil and wheat germ oil; no parabens, mineral oils or artificial colors are included.

Anti-aging, anti-wrinkling and improved skin elasticity are all among the properties the company claims for the Esdor line as a result of its antioxidant ingredients. Adding further to Esdor's eco-creds, meanwhile, is that its main office — surrounded by vineyards in the heart of Spain's Douro region — is a 100 percent sustainable building that generates more energy than it consumes.

Esdor cosmetics are available both online and at select Spanish retailers.

Source :: www.springwise.com

There are certainly better ways to show off your oenophile passions and good design sense than a wine cork board, namely, Fontenay's flooring made from vintage wine barrels.

Selling itself as the "the only provider of reclaimed wine barrel flooring and counter tops in the world," Fontenay offers three types of wood choices in its Vintage Barrel Collection. The Cooperage line takes its wood from the barrel heads, leaving intact the cooper stamps, various marking and an aged patina. For the Wine Infusion line, material from the barrel's inside is used. Naturally stained due to contact with the wine, the effect is a mosaic of juice-soaked colors. Finally, the Stave collection consist of the barrel's exterior wood strips, straightened to form boards, and then engineered to create flooring. These floors display the grains, age marks and a rustic distressing. Since no two planks are the same, in any of the lines, installation creates a unique finish best suited for wine cellars, tasting/dining rooms or kitchens. Fontenay also offers furniture, including wine racks, created from barrels.

With reclaimed wood being the au courant, green-minded design material of choice these days it's nice to see a product that has such a recognizable provenance being used in such an innovative way.

By Michael B. Dougherty | Source :: www.luxist.com

A young British entrepreneur had the bright idea of selling wines in single serve portions in plastic stemmed wine glasses with foil tops.

The single serve, he reasoned, would be attractive to people who didn’t want to open a whole bottle, and just wanted one glass. It would also be attractive to people having picnics, going to festivals and concerts and commuters going home after a hard days work and looking to unwind on the train.

So he took his idea to the friendly and welcoming folk on ‘The Dragons Den’. This is a British TV series where budding entrepreneurs look for funding from a team of hard bitten business people.

Well, they shot him down in flames. Thought his idea was mad, it would never take off.

A few months later he sold his idea, lock, stock and barrel to Marks and Spencer, and now they are selling so much that they are struggling to keep up with demand. The glasses of ready to drink wine are flying off the shelves.

Read the full story.

Source :: www.spill.co.za

Last year I wrote about the Portuguese wineries that have adopted QR codes on their wine labels. Recently, I have noticed more wineries adopting this cool new technology.

A quick refresher on QR codes for the uninitiated. QR codes are a very useful tool for pointing people to more information about your product. This is how it works. You take a photo of the QR code with your phone with a bar code reader and you are automatically taken to the web site that is embedded in the code. This only works with smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry or Droid phones, but these are the most popular phones these days, so a huge number of people now have this capability.

In the wine business this is particularly useful as people can be browsing a liquor store and read reviews about the wine. This is how the Portuguese winery, Cortes de Cima, has been using QR codes on their wine labels. Their QR code takes people to their Adegga page, a web site where people can read independent reviews and ratings of their wine.

In this recent article in The Drinks Business they talk about another Portuguese winery, Tagus Creek, who are now using QR codes on their wine labels. They are using the QR codes to point consumers to videos of wine tastings on their web site. The article also mentions a New Zealand wine called Insight that has just started using QR codes.

QR codes help build a bridge from the offline to the online world. Wouldn’t you like to send every prospect who is considering purchasing your product to a special page on your web site where you can provide them with more information. QR codes allow you to do just that and forward thinking companies are starting to see their benefits.

I fully expect that by the end of this decade most products will have a QR code on their label. And like many innovations in label printing, the wine industry is leading the way. So next time you are at the liquor store take a close look at the labels. I expect you will see more and more QR codes on wine labels in the near future.

By Peter Renton | Source :: Lightning Labels Blog