Marketing Can Be the Key
How many of you have at some time bought a bottle of wine because of the label?
All of us have our favorite things to do. These hobbies, or passions, might be knitting, sewing, gardening, woodworking, sampling wine, reading, hunting, fishing, or numerous other activities. It is often fortunate and surprising that some of our passions overlap in our lives. I have experienced this as my passion for fly fishing and my passion for wine have come together, and as I have indicated earlier, when my fishing buddy, Barney (nickname … long story), and I plan our outings or while we are out on one of our adventures. In the past, one of the wines we shared was a nice Chardonnay from the Sawtooth Winery in Nampa, Idaho, which is located in the southwest part of the state not far from Boise. The wine is made from 100% Chardonnay grapes and was quite tasty out in the wilds of Montana.
I recently was pouring (get the pun?) over my newest edition of “Northwest Fly Fishing” magazine when I came across a small article about the Sawtooth Winery wines - in a fly fishing magazine! I have every edition of this magazine from its first edition, and the first-ever article about alcohol is about a winery whose wines I have personally sampled. For me, the unique thing about the wine is the label, which shows the snowcapped Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho in the background with a stream in the foreground. This is most likely the Snake River, as the Idaho portion of the Snake River is a major fishery for fly fisherman. The label shows a fly fisherman casting his fly forward into the stream. In addition, the foil wrapper over the top of the bottle has a dry fly image stamped into the top portion and the cork in the bottle also has a dry fly image on both ends.
Many times people are attracted to a wine by the image depicted on the label, such as that of a beautiful woman in a sleek red dress or of a favorite old pick-up truck. Sometimes the attraction is an imaginative name such as “Mad Housewife”, “Lady in Red”, or “Joe Blow Red”. These labels are done for the sake of marketing, and it works. Since the first time I saw the label and bought the Chardonnay from Sawtooth, I have also purchased and enjoyed their Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Marketing is certainly the key which opens the door to many good wines.
Sawtooth Winery wines are not bold, complex, set-the-world-on-fire wines, but they have a nice smooth taste which complements many different foods without overpowering them, and are reasonably priced at somewhere between $10 to $15. I have found their wines at Food Pavilion. Sawtooth Winery was given the 2006 Winery of the Year Award by Wine Press Northwest.
Bruce Campbell