Friday, January 14, 2005

Picked up a bottle of one of my favorite inexpensive wines yesterday — R.H. Phillips Dunnigan Hills Syrah (or Shiraz, as they’ve rechristened it).   The wine is still excellent, but their new packaging stinks… here’s what I wrote to their marketing department.

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Folks,  this is a little not-so-gentle feedback from a longtime customer and fan. I have bought and recommended Phillips, Toasted Head, Kempton Clark, and EXP wines for years, and thoroughly enjoyed them. Your new screwcaps, however, are terrible. 

Please don’t think I am one of those "gotta have a cork" traditionalists. I am not opposed to alternate closures — not in the least.  I buy lots of wine with screw tops, and synthetic corks.  However, the closures you’ve chosen are the worst I have ever seen.

1. Esthetically, they make your wine look cheap.  They look like soda caps, not wine.

2. The thread on the bottle is very deep, and the shoulders of the RH Phillips Shiraz bottle are very high.  As a result, it is NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to pour from this bottle without dribbling wine everywhere.

Speaking of bottle shape, has nobody in your marketing department noticed the resemblance between the Shiraz bottle and the bottle from that old german rotgut called Black Tower?  They’re virtually identical.

Please give me a better closure, a bottle with a longer neck, and less pronounced threads.  Please don’t cheapen the image of your wine with gimmicky closures, and goofy bottle shapes.  The wine can stand on its own merits.

Cheers,

A.