men do, though men still spend significantly more on a bottle. "Men tend to purchase higher-price wines, spend more time researching the purchase, and are more technical in that respect," says Rob
Glover, Canadian marketing director for Wolf Blass Wines, which is owned by Foster’s Wine Estates (the company’s premium brands include Lindemans, Penfolds, Rosemount, Beringer Vineyards, Chateau St. Jean and Stags’ Leap).
"The luxury end is male dominated, so we provide more technical information, like alcohol content and growing regions," he says, adding, "As the prices of wines decrease, there’s less of a need for
that kind of information, so then we can focus on packaging. When it comes to the package, women tend to know what they like."
Nevertheless, Rob says it’s important for companies to do a lot of sampling, which women really enjoy. “If they like something, they communicate it among themselves, which creates a buzz that can be a promotional factor,” he says.
Wines marketed to women today are invariably sealed with a screw cap. Although it had been around for years, the “old” screw cap – a shabby, thin, aluminum number – was relegated to bottles of the cheapest plonk. “Good” wines were expected to have corks. The problem was, you needed a tool and a strong arm to yank the damn thing out. And good luck trying to get it back in again. Bottles
sealed with a screw cap are simpler to open, require no tools and are resealed with little effort.
Wolf Blass wines switched from corks to screw caps last year. Like many large companies, Foster’s Wine Estates also spends time, effort and money making sure the labels on their products are attractive. They recently updated Wolf Blass wines with more vibrantly coloured labels.
2 Comments
This is both a laughable and offensive article. I cannot believe that as a serious "journalist" you would suggest that women are incapble of enjoying wines for the same reasons as their male counterparts. Personally, I have always based my preferences on those qualities that make a good wine, well, good. Taste, quality, finish. The fact that a woman was documented as saying that she chose her favourite wine because the label matched her countertop is far from indicative of our preferences. I would suggest winemaker's focus on producing a great wine at a reasonable cost. Marketing ploy solved.
Screw tops because women are unable to muster the strength to pull a cork out of a bottle? We haul 6 bags of groceries in one arm, a 30 lb child in the other, etc etc and we can't pop a cork? In my opinion, screw-top or not, the changes Wolf Blass has made to their wine for the purposes of appealing to their female market has worsened their product. What used to be one of my favourite wines no longer makes an appearance at my dinner table. Wine-makers, by all means, go ahead and make your bottles attractive. Why not. You may very well lure your female consumers into a first purchase. But if we don’t like what’s in the bottle, it will sit on our granite counter tops making our home beautiful while we sip someone else’s wine. I think the writer of this article might have done well to mention there are countless bottle openers that have solved the problem of the stubborn cork, for those of us unable to open a wine bottle or more accurately for those of us who find it a bit of a time consuming pain when company is over and there are many bottles to be opened. But winemakers need not worry about cork vs screwtop, if we like what’s in the bottle, we will find a way in. This article lacks reasonable research and common sense.