Marketing Is Everything

Romar Trading and wine artist Clive Faustin invited for a reasonably priced event at TDB, not long ago, a wine tasting and pairing of the Federalist Wines.
You heard me. The Federalist, doesn’t sound too sexy, but Clive and his audience of 60 bon vivants in the private dining room of TDB, said the wine was most enjoyable, and Clive told me the marketing of the brand includes an image of wine poured into a whiskey glass,” because anyway you drink it, it is excellent.”
Basically, do away with traditional wine drinking ritual and it’s still big and bold, like a Chevy Silverado truck, no need to buy any elegant stemware. Who cares about Riedel.
I decided to read a bit about it, and indeed, the new wine brand targets MEN. I am not going to get into politics, but it seems to me the NRA will be especially fond of the Dueling Pistols Red Blend commemorating a famed American gun battle. The bottle label carries an etched image of two old-fashioned hand guns.
Then there is the Statue of Liberty Chardonnay. Poor lady. Her image is in the public domain, so naturally, anyone can use it to sell anything from condoms to life insurance.
Other victims of mercantilism includes other Founding Fathers such as Ben Franklin, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, nothing is holy, everything is fair in marketing.
The bottle labels however are beautiful with their retro-style etched portraits of American legends.
Not surprisingly, the macho brand was incredibly well received, the winery couldn’t keep up, and it’s not cheap. Priced between $18 to $34 in USA wine stores, three of the five wines sell for $17.76 (in honor of the year the U.S. ratified the Declaration of Independence) and a few are priced $14.92 (when Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas).
I found a quote: “We completely underestimated how well it was going to do,” Terlato Wines Chief Executive Bill Terlato told Fortune. He said the wine producer could ship more than double what it had initially anticipated “if we can get the wine bottled up and produced in time.”
It was an overnight success.
The Federalist explains that winemaking began in the U.S. shortly after Columbus arrived and was an economic goal for settlers. Shortly after arriving in California wine country was discovered and America’s ‘New World’ style Zinfandel took root.
Visionary Zinfandel is considered the flagship wine of the Federalist brand and it features the #1 Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, riding the coat tails of the most successful Broadway musical about a statesman cum politician who died in a duel gunfire.
School shootings on one hand, and guns on wine labels on the other. We live in a confusing culture.

Share on:

May 09, 2019
Rona Coster