6 August 2009
TWS Best Value Dozen July 2009
While you can’t always judge a book by looking at the cover, or a wine by glancing at the label, you can’t always avoid leaping to conclusions when you take a glance at the packaging of items we encounter in our day to day lives. Packaging plays an important role in the success or failure of products that are lined up on shelves along with their competitors and brand recognition factors are an important consideration when the packaging is being designed.
At the same time, I become suspicious when I encounter wine bottles with overly colourful or otherwise eye-catching designs, particularly when we’re looking at the lower end of the market, where consumer decisions are largely based on a combination of price point and brand recognition.
It’s an area where the majority of consumers are likely to be looking for styles that are comfortably familiar rather than unusual or interesting variations on familiar themes. Given the price point they’re looking at, you’d expect, for example, that oak in a wine would originate from woodchips in a metal tank rather than maturation in hogsheads, puncheons or other variations on the barrel theme.
The arrival of the July edition of The Wine Society Best Value Dozen had me reflecting on these themes since four of the six wines in the package came from wineries I didn’t recall encountering before, and two of them had labels that had the alarm bells ringing in the old brain.

After all, I live next door to the Coral Sea, and fail to see any obvious link between that body of water, Shiraz and Renmark. The presence of a large brightly-coloured denizen of the deep on a bottle of red wines strikes me as more than a tad fishy. Checking the company’s website suggested that the labels colour-code the fish to match the wine colour.
There isn’t, however, much wrong with what I found in the two bottles of Coral Sea 2008 Shiraz (RRP $12.99, TWS $10.99, Reorder $9.34). Nicely spicy with a touch of leather on the nose, plenty of berry fruit and a trace of chocolate in the mouth, nicely rounded in an easy drinking style. While it isn’t the greatest wine you’ve ever drunk, at the price point it’s better than many.
Even with reservations about the packaging I’d be tempted to line up for more. Reorder price lasts till the end of August if stocks last, so it’s worth bearing in mind. If, as I suspect, we’re looking at a label intended for export you mightn’t find too many of these sitting on the shelves once they’ve somehow managed to dispose of the current wine glut.
Assuming, of course, that they can manage to do that.
The other wine where the packaging gave me cause to pause was the Swish Wine Tin Soldier 2008 Semillon Sauvignon Blanc (RRP $25, TWS $13.99, Reorder $11.89). Now, according to the pamphlet that came in the box from The Wine Society, The labels and bottles are impressive and so is the wine.
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