Branding a Wine

The wine industry truly shows the power of branding. Medicore wines with great branding behind them sell for big bucks. Far better wines with no focus on branding have much more trouble selling. 

What is going on? So many wineries have their family names attached to them. And, some family names are just catchier than others. They just sound like something special. Similarly, wineries with either two-family or hyphenated, or two-word names that sound like they could be family seem to market much better. 

Let's consider a few examples. There is a fairly high end winery specializing in Pinot Noir in Sonoma County called Kosta Browne. Not surprisingly, the winery was founded by two people with the names Kosta and Browne. Over time, they built themselves quite a cult following despite using only pruchased grapes. Their wines were highly extracted from very sugar-rich grapes until with a new winemaker with a different winemaking style changed everything up in 2015. But, their business model was largely direct-to-consumer. And, Kosta Browne sounds refined and cool. But, suppose instead, they had been Browne Kosta. I bet you never would have heard about them.

Let's stay in Sonome County. Everyone has heard of Kendall-Jackson. It's one of the most successful wine lables of all time. Founded by Jess Jackson and his former wife whose maiden name was Kendall, rumor has it they had a decision to make. They decided among Kendall-Jackson, Kendall Wines, Jackson Wines, or Kendall Jackson. They settled on Kendall-Jackson and went further by labeling their wines as various types of Reserve. Kendall-Jackson took off. The far better other wineries of Jackson Family Wines never approached their Kendall-Jackson label in popularity. Branding worked.

To me, one of the really coolest branding stories in wine took place in Australia. You might have heard of a wine known as Marquis Phillips. It was the baby of the Marquis family and the Phillips family and made very nice wine. The two families fought and split up. The Phillips family kept the original brand while Sarah and Sparky Marquis went off on their own with a new label. You would have thought that Mr. and Mrs. Phillips had won this battle.

But, Sarah Marquis went to her winemaking husband with a brainstorm. Let's make a wine that's about us. Let's make a wine about a left-handed couple. 

Well, in Australia, much as Americans might call a left-handed person a southpaw, in Australia, they are sometimes called a Mollydooker. And, Sparky had once fancied himself a Boxer. 

In its initial release, the Marquis family could not produce enough of Mollydooker's The Boxer to keep the shelves filled. The wine went nuts and they continuesd to release other interestingly names wines including Blue-Eyed Boy (their son), Two Left Feet, and Velvet Glove (the bottles are packaged in a velvet "glove"). Their wines became wildly successful, but you don't know about the Phillips wines do you?

It's about the brand.