Wine: Designer labels

The stuff in the glass counts, but bottle shape, artwork and name all influence which wines we buy

It’s been a week of unusual labels. With winemakers facing fierce competition to get their wines onto our shelves and into our shopping trolleys, they have to think up new ideas to stand out from the crowd. If gimmicky Fat Bastard, Chat-en-Oeuf or Arrogant Frog are passé, what’s new?

Sauvignon.com sounds like the name of a website, but it is also the name of a wine. It is the brainchild of a young Cape winemaker, Thys Low, who had another sauvignon blanc to sell into a busy marketplace. He wanted to find a way of “engaging with a new generation of consumers”. He reckons he has found a breakthrough concept of linking wine to the web. Wherever he finds great sauvignon blanc in the world, he will produce a wine under this label. Handy if the price/vintage is better in Chile, France or New Zealand, than in his native South Africa.

In Italy, there is a new Italian generic, Memoro NV, which sounds like a way of mopping up unwanted Italian grapes across the regions. The cuvee is made up of 40 per cent primitivo from Puglia, 30 per cent montepulciano from Abruzzo, 20 per cent nero d’avola from Sicily and 10 per cent merlot from Veneto.

It all sounds a bit of a hotch-potch, but in Australia, multi-regional blending is a way of life – it is also done in Italy with the big buxom flavours from vineyards of the south bolstering the northern vats.

In Spain, prized albarino (a wonderful high quality white grape from north west Spain and a personal favourite) has had a facelift. Pazo de Barrantes, owned by rioja producer Murrieta, used to be bottled in a flute shaped bottle with pilgrim slippers on the label, but now has a pretty painted Belle Epoque style bottle.

With camellias, hydrangeas and honeysuckle highlighting the very aromatic wine inside and a bright ochre colour to match the lichen that grows on the seaside estate in this wet wine region, it is now a very feminine, eye-catching bottle. They have incorporated a food-matching idea in the design with the scallops – the best seafood match for this wine – associated with Galicia’s windswept seashores.

Lastly, to New Zealand for A Sticky End and an interesting use of leftover sauvignon blanc grapes by Brent Marris, who has invented something new by leaving grapes on the vine eight weeks after harvest, to develop a little botytris “noble rot”, then fermenting them slowly in French casks, assisted with a German yeast, just as sauternes is made. A Sticky End label mimics a nobleman’s wax seal and type script.

To see some very cool wine labels, visit www.designjuices.co.uk

White

SAUVIGNON.COM 2011

(£8.49, Tesco)

Limey lemon aromas, tropical fruit ripeness, juicy zesty – well-made.

PAZO DE BARRANTES ALBARINO 2010

(£14, Raeburn Wines; Woodwinters)

Very floral white flower aromas, delicious fleshy textural fruits with minerally undertones, slight salty tang, crisp dry finish.

Red

MEMORO VINO D’ITALIA NV

(£9.49, Tesco)

Smoky vanilla and tobacco, ripe figs, passito (dried fruit) hint, coffee and liquorice: tastes like a weird and wonderfully delicious blend of modern style chianti and amarone.

Sweet

A STICKY END 2009

(£18.99, Waverley)

Think gooseberries with a sweet finish and citric bite, this savvy blanc won gold at the Decanter wine awards.