A Post About Capsules Probably Shouldn’t Be This Long

posted by Scott in Wine, Guest Bloggers

Let’s start at the top. Really, let’s start at the top of the bottle. This is where it all begins. After we lay eyes on the wine label, but before we extract the cork, we encounter the capsule. Our experience in dealing with the capsule can color the impression of the wine. Cheap PVC (poly-vinyl chloride) plastic capsules give off an aura of, well, cheapness. These are the difficult to remove capsules that are often found on mass-market wines; they are heat shrunk to fit snugly on the top of the bottle. There are also aluminum capsules that give a wine an air of sophistication for about 10 cents more than PVC capsules.

There are Polyam capsules (pictured above), which are hybrids, and there are tin capsules, which are weighty, classy and expensive (at 13 to 18 cents a pop). Then there are no capsules (free and naked looking, like a bag of cereal without a box) and there are wax capsules (the bane of sommeliers who struggle to chip away at the stuff without making a mess).

There are so many choices and every one is compromise between quality, price, accessibility, and aesthetics. For a interesting (as interesting as an article on wine capsules can get), contemporary history of capsules click here and for a current overview of bottle toppers click here.

What do I like? I love tin. It is easy to cut through with the blade of a waiters’ corkscrew; it tends to be thicker and heavier (which certainly has its own connotations). Of course, it costs more, but it also looks and feels right. I enjoy the look of wax, but not the work required to remove it. Aluminum is a fair deal, easy to remove and visually similar to tin without the pomp and price. I can live without PVC and Polyam capsules, but I don’t imagine them disappearing anytime soon. Let me state that I don’t believe that any wine buying decision should be governed solely by wine capsule type. Of course, if you lack a corkscrew (or a vacuum to clean chunks of wax off the floor) you might opt for another type of capsule entirely, a screwcap.

Scott Rosenbaum is director of operations for the International Wine Center and wine buyer for the retailer DrinkUpNY.

Blasted Barcode

posted by Scott in Snooth, Guest Bloggers

Say what you will. Wine is not a quilt; it’s neither handmade nor one-of-a-kind. It is a commodity. Even if production is minuscule. 500 cases, for instance, still yields 6,000 bottles which is higher than I’d ever like to count out loud. If you don’t care to admit this, I offer you some evidence: the barcode.

The barcode is a sign of the times. The world has become itemized and scannable. Those who wear loathsome looks on their faces while reading this ought to think about how long it would take to buy groceries at the supermarket without barcodes. Evil or not, the barcode is necessary. Those wineries that send their bottles out into the world without barcodes display disregard for those wishing to sell and buy them.

Now don’t get me wrong. Not everything about barcodes is all sunshine and kittens. While our eyes have become habituated to the way they look, barcodes tend to visually clash with the rest of the back label. Such design is often awkward and disjointed. Viewer complacency is no excuse for lazy design choices.

Some wine label designers have taken to the challenge the barcode offers. They incorporate it into the story the label tells thus enriching our experience while giving us pause to think how a little creativity goes a long way. Take the line of Blasted Church wines. Graphically pleasing to begin with, these wines playfully integrate the barcode as part of a newspaper or hymnbook to make for a more cohesive visual.

Similarly, CheapSkate’s Miser Meritage turns the barcode into a toothy grin conspicuously reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat’s menacing smile.

These are but a few examples of what a quick search yields. I welcome comments that point to other such examples of barcode innovation. After all, there’s nothing wrong with a label that has a boring barcode except for the fact that it doesn’t have to be boring.

Wine Words: Geek vs. Snob

posted by Scott in Wine Industry, Guest Bloggers

The subtleties of language have long fascinated me. I make no claim to any formal training in linguistics. Even my grammar and style are sometimes lacking; I have been known to write in the passive voice. Still, words intrigue me, particularly their meanings and usage. It is with this interest that I hope to start blogging about more than just wine packaging. Yes, from time to time, you’ll now be privy to my un-academic musings on wine and language. I imagine the smile on your face while reading this; yes, 2008 is shaping up to be quite the year already.

So on to wine and words… One interesting etymology is the example of Saint Vincent. He is the patron saint of wine, not because he was a wine-maker (or even a notable wine drinker), but rather because “Vincent” is a derivative of “vin sang” (or blood of the vine). At least, that’s what I’ve read.

As you may have gleaned from the previous paragraph, I’m a wine geek. Or I am better described as a wine snob? Snob and geek are obviously different in their meanings and connotations. According to the OED (this I’ve learned is how intelligent people refer to the Oxford English Dictionary; for a long while I thought the abbreviation was short for some psychological disorder), wine snob started appearing in print sometime in the mid-20th century (probably 1951). Wine geek is the younger of the two terms and first appeared, as best I can tell, sometime in the early 1990’s and it wasn’t until 1999 that the term first showed up in the New York Times.

It is certainly hipper to be a wine geek than it is to be a wine snob. The term aptly describes those who possess knowledge and lack pretension. Still, the term “wine snob” turns up more entries on a Google search than “wine geek”, meaning the old phrase still looms large in our vernacular, if not just our imagination. Yes, the wine geek might brag that it is preferable to know more than spend more, but the act of bragging is fairly uncouth in and of itself.

I say lets do away with both the geek and the snob. I urge you, gentle reader, to take the higher road and by this I don’t mean to refer to yourself as an oenophile. After all, we enjoy wine without being called a drunk just as we can know about wine without being labeled a connoisseur. Next time someone asks about your relationship with wine, simply say you love the stuff. If love is too strong a word, “like” will also suffice. Once someone called me a “vinoculturist,” I doubt the word will ever catch on. I kind of hope it doesn’t. Then again, whoever coined the term “winesmanship,” must have found it funny when they saw their word in the dictionary.

Scott Rosenbaum is director of operations for the International Wine Center and wine buyer for the retailer DrinkUpNY.