Brewery-led packaging innovation will increase the occasions on which wine is drunk.
I was interested in this article in The Oz in which Foster’s Australasian wine boss was giving his thoughts on wine. It’s always fascinating to talk beer with business people. The average reader of these rantings – who I would affectionately call the beer purist – thinks that the only concern of the brewery should be to let the brewer make great beer. It would be a wonderful world, a better world, where that happened AND great breweries could stay in business, generate the capital they need to expand to keep up with demand etc etc etc.
Of course, in the real world, beer is business. Unit cost, innovation, distribution, porfolios, packaging, brands and brand values are often more important than what actually goes in the bottle. None of us really like it with our utopian ideas of beery nirvana, but that’s the world we live in (butu please don’t stop trying to change that world, one great beer at a time.)
So it was interesting to see David Dearie try to argue that wine wasn’t a commodity these days. Wine still carries with it a cachet, a snob value, that beer will never and should never have. But, in my view, this is also one of the reasons that wine is so successful. I think there is a huge section of people who really like the idea of drinking wine, but don’t really like the flavour – or know so little about it they just buy the label with the critter on it or the second cheapest on a wine list. The point is this class of wine drinker drinks it because they think that it makes them appear more sophisticated than drinking beer at a restaurant or elsewhere.
The theatre of wine, the need for the right glass (and Riedel has built an industry hyping that), the cork, the sniff and the pour all contribute to why people drink wine on certain occasions instead of beer. I’d love to see the pckaging innovations, and what it will do to the perception of wine, that will follow this comment…
“Dearie also wants to expand the number of occasions on which wine is drunk, with the traditional glass bottle excluding it from events where the hassle of carrying glasses and a corkscrew means drinkers tend to choose beer. The solution, he says is packaging innovation.”
To keep its leading premium beer at events that don’t permit glass, Foster’s developed the aluminium Crown bottle. A really clever innovation that didn’t change the experience in a major way (from taste tests we’ve done on the Beer Show, dedicated Crown drinkers say that they can taste a difference), but the shape of the bottle was the same and the experience – drinking from a Crown-shaped bottle – is largely the same. What can wine do? Plastic bottles will get the wine into events, but does “packaging innovation” and ridding the wine drinker of the “hassle of carrying glasses and a corkscrew” mean encouraging drinking wine from the bottle? Or will they develop plastic cups akin to the Berocca Twist ‘n Go? Or maybe a wine cask/hat combo like beer yobs have used for years.
With ‘innovation’ in the beer leading to the brave new worlds of chill-filtered beer, low-carb beer and chromazone labels (that change when your beer is cold enough that you can’t taste it), I can’t wait to see what is in store for wine…
8 responses so far ↓
David // February 1, 2010 at 1:34 pm |
Neglecting the glass bottle issue, there are other, more practical, reasons why beer isn’t drunk at these sort of events. Firstly, beer is often used as a refreshing drink, whereas wine is generally is not a refreshment but rather a drink to accompany a meal or a more sedate setting. There are some exceptions to this (Moscato, sparkling reds), but frankly I wouldn’t be fronting up to the Big Day Out in 35 degree heat asking for a big hearty shiraz – I want a beer because it is cold, fizzy, fairly tasteless, and very refreshing. Secondly, wine is stronger than beer or mixed spirits, so the consumption of that whilst standing or partying at some other event (like a concert or similar) is harder than that of beer. It is quite easy to finish a bottle or can of beer quickly, but with wine it’s bit harder, especially if you’re buying by the bottle (this is where the innovation is needed I guess – perhaps more half- or quarter-sized bottles will help with this). I assume concerts like the Big Day Out because I guess the more sedate concert settings are already wine occasions.
And thirdly, as alluded to above, a cheap beer can be fairly refreshing due to its lack of taste and the fact you have to drink it ice cold or have nightmares for weeks. Wine on the other hand tends to be very, very ordinary when cheap, especially at functions where the cheapest plonk is bought for mass consumption. I think beer and spirits have an advantage that the cheaper end of the spectrum is still consumable, where wine isn’t so much.
BeerMatt // February 1, 2010 at 1:47 pm |
Thanks David. From your blog I see that you’re big into wine, which is great. But if all of the beers you are drinking are “cold, fizzy, fairly tasteless” and give you “nightmares for weeks”, we really need to chat. I’ll introduce you to some beers that are definitely “a drink to accompany a meal or a more sedate setting”!
David // February 1, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Lol, thankfully I don’t drink those beers too often – I try to avoid them on most occasions. I guess if I’m after refreshment, then a beer of the cold/tasteless/fizzy variety is fine, but I do generally only drink when I’m eating, so something a bit more interesting is usually called for. We went to the Red Hill Brewery in the Mornington Peninsula whilst there (the blog post is yet to come), and they had some very tasty drops. Hope I can get some up here.
BeerMatt // February 2, 2010 at 3:56 pm |
You certainly are discovering some good beers with Red Hill and Rogers but even a “good value wine” (which I would think is in the $12 – $20 a bottle range) is far more expensive by volume than a 6-pack of great craft beer. The only differenece is people are still stuck in the “gotta drink a 6-pack” mindset that makes it seem expensive. If you have two glasses of average wine it costs about the same as two bottles of an ecellent and very flavoursome craft beer.
David // February 2, 2010 at 6:46 pm |
True enough, but the penny pincher in me has always struggled with the idea of not buying a carton of something – still don’t see why they charge a mark up on a 6-pack for taking it out of the box…
BeerMatt // February 2, 2010 at 7:05 pm
So you always buy wine by the carton? They charge more for a 6-pack for exactly the same reason that they charge 25% less when they don’t take wine out of the box (ie when you buy a carton). The only difference is that most people are conditioned to buying wine by the bottle and think they are getting a better deal on the carton. With beer they’re conditioned to buy cartons and so only see the price hike for a sixer. Exactly the same thing, it’s just how you look at it. $18 – $20 for a sixer of Mountain Goat, Bridge Road, Red Hill or any number of other great beers is a steal.
BeerMatt // February 1, 2010 at 3:22 pm |
Good call! Red Hill are a great brewery and there are so many great microbreweries brewing in Australia you may never need to drink wine again!
David // February 2, 2010 at 12:52 pm |
I still enjoy wine far too much to fully replace it with beer, though I am enjoying some Rogers beer at the moment, courtesy of a recommendation in James Halliday’s top 100 that appeared in The Oz recently. The main reasons for this are that it’s easier to find good value wine, and too much beer leaves me hungover and bloated (the wine just leaves a hangover).