The document discusses how Ontario VQA wine producers are leveraging innovative packaging and branding strategies to attract younger consumers and drive sales growth. It profiles several wineries that have launched new concept brands targeting millennials with funky, non-traditional labels and packaging. These brands are priced in the $10-15 range and emphasize fun and approachability over prestige. The new branding coincides with a trend of blending grape varieties to appeal to broader tastes. Producers see the concept brands as a way to introduce new consumers to VQA wines and build lifelong customers.

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14 • PRINTACTION • MARCH 2012
K
athy Cannon, Director, Wines,
at the Liquor Control Board
of Ontario (LCBO, Toronto)
says innovative concept-brands
and a corresponding influx of
new packaging techniques in the
wine market are propelling sales
of Ontario VQA wines sky high.
Concept-brands create a meaning
greater than any given productor
service delivered under that
brand name. Apple provides the
ultimate example, because the
company manufactures and
markets various electronic goods,
all of which are recognized for
being easy to use, yet powerful,
while looking very cool. And
now the same concept-brand
trend is hitting Ontario VQA
wines.
The Ontario VQA label is
a quality designation from the
Ontario Vintners Quality Al-
liance, an independent authority
overseeing the province’s wine-
production standards. Cannon,
who heads up LCBO’s entire
buying and inventory team for
both domestic and international
wines, explains:“For a long time,
Ontario wineries relied on out-
dated packaging and the as-
sumption that, if it’s a great
wine, it will sell. But like it
or not, buyers of the Ontario
VQA category are buying based
primarily on packaging and
whether they can relate to it.
“So for about the last three
years, less traditional kinds of
labels have put a different face
on the category and taken away
the pretentious side of wine.The
new packaging is funky and fun.
It leaves customers not feeling
intimidated and gives them the
confidence to shop around and
pick up products with intriguing
packaging and try them. VQA
wine doesn’t look like something my parents drink
any more.”
Cannon confirms that the new products driving
growth are mainly less expensive wines (in roughly the
$10-$15 price range) targeting younger, entry-level cus-
tomers, who are not brand loyal but crave something
new and exciting. “It’s not just happening with wine,”
Cannon clarifies. “Whenever we put new things out
that have funky packaging and a neat name – poof!
They’re instant sellers to younger customers who want
to be on top of the trend.”
Cannon says the new style of wine branding coin-
cides with a trend in Ontario and worldwide to produce
new wines consisting of a blend of several grape vari-
etals (e.g., Riesling plus Chardonnay). She says the
blends are designed for wider appeal and describes
them as“easy drinking – milder, tastier, not overly sweet
but off dry, with a lot of fruit but not a lot of tannin.”
She explains that the strategy behind all these
changes is to build the base of Ontario wine shoppers
and get the current shopper to buy more over time:“We
recognize that younger customers around age 25 have
fewer responsibilities than older adults and thus higher
disposable incomes and higher levels of alcohol con-
sumption. So we wanted to reach them at the tipping
point of moving from coolers into wine.
“The idea is to attract people
to buy wine throughout their
lifespan as a consumer, so we
offer a big selection of concept-
brands that allows introductory
customers to shop around and
have fun in the VQA section,
then, when their palate is ready,
move up into the more pre-
mium wines LCBO sells in the
Vintages section.”
Cannon reports that, as a re-
sult of new products, branding,
and packaging over the past two
years, the LCBO has seen dou-
ble-digit growth of 16 to 18 per-
cent in Ontario VQA sales – a
level significantly outpacing
their total wine sales, which grew
four percent.
Innovative brands at
Henry of Pelham
Cannon credits Henry of Pel-
ham Family Estate Winery (St.
Catharines) with pioneering the
new Ontario brands. Tradition-
ally, the winery’s Henry of Pel-
ham brand has always focused
on classic premium wines and
emphasized the winery’s her-
itage, commencing with its
namesake, settler Henry Smith
of Pelham.
The company’s branding de-
parture came in 2008 with the
launch of Sibling Rivalry, a port-
folio of three wines with colour-
ful, hand-drawn graphics
emphasizing the personalities
and lighthearted partnership be-
tween the three brothers Paul,
Matthew, and Daniel Speck, who
founded the winery with their
father and still run it today.
“The Sibling Rivalry branding
tries to make the wine easy and
approachable. It suggests fun
and special occasions, especially
by the way we are dressed on the
label – in blue jeans, but expensive designer ones,” says
Daniel Speck, VP Sales and Marketing.“Because of the
winery’s association with premium brands, the wine
has to be of good quality, but in this case it’s three dif-
ferent blended varietals – red, white, and pink – one for
each of the three brothers.
“The fact that Sibling Rivalry was such a big hit came
as a surprise. We were terrified when we did it, but we
felt we had to. So many new wine products are being
launched into the LCBO that the old guard was feeling
their limits, and then the economy went off a cliff, so
we needed to bring something new to market. It wasn’t
really how we saw ourselves, and our real fear was, if it
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Concept-brands Leverage Packaging
to Drive VQA Wines

3. was a total flop, it could also do some
damage to the original Henry brand.”
Following the success of Sibling Rivalry,
they launched their next new accessible
concept-brand in 2011: House Wine Co.,
consisting of a white Riesling Pinot Gri-
gio and a red Cabernet Shiraz blend with
labels resembling writing on a chalk-
board and more marketing rubric aimed
at banishing wine snobbery; for instance:
Does good wine have to be complicated? At
our HOUSE, we believe too much stuff gets
in the way of simple pleasures. We go to our
favourite resto and say “just bring us what
YOU like, we trust you” and it’s always
awesome.
“The House branding creates a climate
for long-term storytelling, as well as the
growth of our customers as wine con-
sumers. I love going to a local barbeque
joint in blue jeans with my wife to drink
beer and eat pulled-pork sandwiches, but
we also got dressed up and went to the
Ritz-Carlton for our anniversary. In the
same way, customers can be in two mind
spaces. People can drink House one day
and Henry the next, depending on the
occasion and their state of mind. The re-
ality is people are not as brand loyal as
they used to be, so we see more brands
being developed so wineries can hold
their volume and grow their business,”
says Speck, whose winery plans to launch
two new line extensions of the House-
brand portfolio in the coming months.
Saving the planet at
Château des Charmes
Michèle Bosc, Director of Marketing at
Château des Charmes (Niagara-on-the-
Lake), says the fastest-growing cohort of
wine consumers is the Millennials, who
are willing to spend more disposable in-
come on experiences like visiting wine
country.“The younger generation is also
interested in the local movement, in wine
as an agricultural product, and in saving
the planet. And the social-media revolu-
tion has transformed food and wine from
being topics for geeks to subjects for
everyday people. As a result, our market-
ing has to appeal to all these factors.”
Bosc has engaged with the social-
media wine community for at least two-
and-a-half years and adds QR codes to
her product labels: “QR codes make our
labels dynamic for tech-savvy Gen-Yers.
Typically, conventional labels are printed
once a year, and the information stays
static on them until the winery sells out
of that vintage. But QR codes enable con-
sumers to obtain the most current infor-
mation on our winery’s Website – even
while they are drinking our products at a
reception, where the codes act as a more
trendy and environmentally friendly
form of advertising than a stand-up card-
board display.”
Bosc’s marketing collateral details how
her father-in-law, Paul Bosc, who founded
the winery, established sustainable agri-
MARCH 2012 • PRINTACTION • 15
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4. culture from the beginning, and how
their environmentally conscious packag-
ing uses FSC-certified papers, lighter-
weight glass, and screw caps only
sparingly, since corks have a significantly
lower carbon footprint. They donate
a portion of profits from two of their
wines to the Toronto Zoo, while their
recently released Generation Seven
wines, comprising an easy-drinking
white and a red blend, raise funds for a
Canadian youth anti-hunger charity
called Meal Exchange.
The Generation Seven label shows a
tree with a trunk resembling a DNA
strand and seven framed caricature-like
portraits in its branches, representing
seven generations of the Bosc family who
built the winery. “Generation Seven is
also an ages-old ecological concept that
says we must consider the decisions we
make today for seven generations into the
future,” adds Bosc.
Tattoos and Love Potion
at Legends Estates
Legends Estates Winery in Beamsville,
Ontario, collaborated with a renowned
local tattoo artist to design a three-wine
portfolio called Truth or Dare, launched
about a year ago, and consisting of a fresh
white blend (Truth), a bold red blend
(Dare), and a sparkling rosé. “I wanted a
concept that would entice a demographic
aged 19 to 40 to try wine instead of an-
other alcoholic beverage,” explains Leg-
ends Vice-President Paul Lizak. He says
the brand’s plastic-sleeve bottles are more
common for alcoholic spirits than wine:
“While a conventional wine label costs 10
to 15 cents, a shrink-wrapped sleeve like
this costs 45 to 65 cents; but we felt it was
important to use the sleeved bottle as a
showpiece, because people shop with
their eyes first.”
The sparkling rosé’s price tag of under
$20 is rare, but Legends makes the wine
using an unconventional tank-manufac-
turing process that helps keep the price
16 • PRINTACTION • MARCH 2012
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5. reasonable. Lizak says the winery hosts a
lot of weddings, but they never had a
sparkling wine to offer guests until now.
He wanted to label the rosé“Love Potion”,
but LCBO turned down the name be-
cause of its supposed implications of sex-
ual prowess.“Their response didn’t really
make sense to us, when LCBO already has
other names like Fat Bastard [one of the
newer, uncharacteristically cheeky French
labels] on the shelf,” he laughs.
Another of their recent brands, aimed
mainly at women, called Diva, con-
tributes some of its profits to a local
women’s shelter. Next Legends plans to
produce an exclusive new premium wine
for Vintages.
Consumer engagement and
foreign markets for Pillitteri
Straight Up is the new brand of red and
white blended wines launched last year
by Pillitteri Estates Winery (Niagara-on-
the-Lake). Like other new VQA brands, it
is skewed towards the younger market of
“aspirationals” – but especially towards
women, who are the primary wine pur-
chasers among youthful consumers aged
20 to 25, according to Jeff Letvenuk, Pil-
litteri’s Marketing and Media Relations
Manager.
Straight Up’s labels are clearly ad-
dressed to people who don’t know any-
thing about wine. For instance, the white
wine’s label reads: You’re bright, fun and
easy going. You love to enjoy a glass of crisp,
refreshing and delicious wine on a sunny
patio or while relaxing on a hot summer
day. You know what you want, an easy
drinking, great tasting WHITE. You can’t
be bothered with all those fancy names you
can’t pronounce – gew-urz-tra-what? And
let’s be honest, what wine doesn’t go with
chicken?
The label also provides such basic in-
formation as which foods the wine goes
with, the exact temperature to which you
should chill it, and the size and shape of
glass in which you should serve it. But
one omission on Straight Up’s packaging
is the Pillitteri name. “We consider it a
secondary brand and a distinct entity
that requires a different type of market-
ing, more of a beer approach,” explains
Letvenuk, whose tactics for Straight Up
include social-media marketing and at-
tractive young brand ambassadors, who
distribute wine samples, beads, sun-
glasses, and other giveaways at major
events likely to attract the target demo-
graphic. Letvenuk expects their next ven-
ture, scheduled for launch this summer
or fall, will be even more heavily con-
sumer driven.
Letvenuk explains that, unlike Straight
Up’s keep-it-simple approach, packaging
34 • PRINTACTION • MARCH 2012
Continued from page 16
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6. for higher-end wines,aimed at established
wine drinkers and high-knowledge con-
sumers, uses thicker glass, unique bottle
styles, and a more prestigious-looking
label with more and different infor-
mation. Thus Pillitteri’s Exclama-
tion brand, aimed at affluent
Baby Boomers, has a label made
of pewter and is inspired by a
work of modern art owned by
the winery.
Unlike many other Ontario
wineries that sell their products
mostly in Ontario or other Cana-
dian provinces, Pillitteri markets
its wares aggressively to over 30
different countries. Letvenuk
uses several different label suppli-
ers, including one producer of
shorter-run digital labels for for-
eign test-marketing in places like
China, where he says consumers
want all wines to have a very tra-
ditional look. He especially ap-
preciates label suppliers who
offer him not only original de-
signs but also new technologies
for embossing, 3D textures, holo-
grams, and other enhancements
to keep things looking fresh, since
the LCBO requires wineries like
his to reinvent their products every
three to five years.
Girls rule at
Colio Estate
Cannon identifies one of
the best launched On-
tario brands as Girls
Night Out (GNO)
by Colio Estate
Winery (Harrow),
a brand targeted
directly to
women. Doug
Beatty, VP Mar-
keting (Missis-
sauga), says the
brand-concept
originated in his
discussions over
the kitchen table
with his wife and
daughters, plus
the fact that
women account
for a majority of
all household pur-
chasing decisions.
“The expression
‘Girls Night Out’
may mean some-
thing different to
every woman you
talk to, but it always
carries a sense of respite from
the drudgery of everyday life, a sense
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7. of empowerment, and an exclusive realm that we
guys will never belong to,” says Beatty.
He sought approval for the label designs, each
showing a different style of dress, from a circle of
close female friends before taking them to the
presentation stage. “At the time, things were
still male-dominated at the LCBO, as well as
with my own management and ownership
team. So one of the biggest hurdles we faced
was selling the concept. But when I showed
it to women, it resonated with them.
“As the concept evolved, I struggled to
keep all male opinions away to avoid com-
promising both the concept and the in-
tegrity of the product, because women will
not put up with anything that speaks to
them of deception and patronization,” he
explains.
Today the GNO portfolio consists of
seven wines, some blended and some single
varietals. In 2008, Colio launched the first
three wines at Buff Nail Lounge in Toronto,
so guests could enjoy manicures and pedi-
cures while sampling the products. A por-
tion of proceeds from every bottle sold was
donated to Girls Helping Girls, a charity
that assists female college students in finan-
cial need. For GNO Rosé’s 2011 launch,All-
Stick Label Limited designed a label with a
likeness of a sequined dress requiring a
technically challenging combination of foil
and a pearl finish.
In 2010, Colio launched four GNO flavoured
wines with a light alcohol content,fruit flavour pro-
file, and names like Tropical Tango (grapefruit/
pineapple/lemon) and Citrusberry (blueberry/
blood orange). At first Beatty thought the
flavoured wines might diminish the reputation
of Colio’s VQA products, but he also recog-
nized that women might drink Chardonnay
with a meal, but might want to drink some-
thing more fun while sitting around the pool.
Like Speck,he ultimately decided the new line
extensions were a way of speaking to the same
audience on different occasions. His future
plans include marketing partnerships with
large retailers and female-targeted movies, as
well as expansion into most of the world’s
major English-speaking markets
Cannon says other countries, especially in
the New World, have climbed on similar
bandwagons, but that Ontario is by far the
current world leader in innovative wine
brands: “Recently we had a French conglom-
erate visit which commented on how great
our OntarioVQA section looked and thought
the French had a lot to learn from it. It’s excit-
ing for Ontario winemakers, because for a
long time they were chasing and copying every
other country. For once, other countries are
looking to Ontario as a leader.”
Victoria Gaitskell is keen to exchange ideas
with readers at victoria@printaction.com
36 • PRINTACTION • MARCH 2012
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