You Don’t Have to Finish It.
Open It Tuesday, Enjoy It Friday – Marketing at it’s best
Mālō e lelei, fellow wine explorers.
Four bottles.
That is the number I keep coming back to. Not the price. Not the score. Four bottles of NZ Sav Blanc in a 3L cask format.
Something landed in front of me this week that had me thinking less about what is in the glass and more about how it got there.
How much of what you drink is decided by the wine and how much is decided by the marketing?
You have walked past a good bottle because the label looked cheap. So have I. I studied wine in France and I still catch myself doing it.
And here is the part that got my attention. This thing is not even aimed at us.
It could work in New Zealand yet. We are still attached to the bottle. But in the United States? I think it has a real shot. And that gap between what flies here and what flies there is one of the most interesting things in wine right now.
Three litres, in a cardboard box. Four normal 750ml bottles, sitting in one hand. That was the first tick for me, before I read a word about the wine.
And here is the bit nobody says out loud. You open a bottle on a Tuesday. One glass, maybe two. Then it sits on the bench with the air getting in, and by Thursday it is tired, and you know it is tired, and you drink it anyway.
This one does not do that.
Pour what you want. Put it back in the fridge. Come back on Friday and it is still the wine you opened.
You do not have to finish it.
What it actually is
By Josh Scott Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc XXXL.
Allan Scott planted some of the very first vines in Marlborough in 1973, back when the region had no wineries to speak of. He and Cathy started Allan Scott Wines on Jackson’s Road in 1990, one of the first wave of independents. Marlborough now has more than 150 wineries and 500 growers and the son of the man who planted it is the one putting it in a box.
And that box is doing half the work.
Comic book. Proper 1960s comic book. Teal and hot pink, thick black outlines, dot patterns. Speech bubbles going off like fireworks WOW! SUPERIOR SAUV! STAYS FRESH LONGER!
And on the front, in a pink jacket and purple glasses, looking very pleased with himself: a cat.
A cat.
You cannot be intimidated by a cat in a pink jacket. That’s the trick. Every label I studied in France was built to make you feel small, the château, the crest, the vintage printed in serious type. This one is built to make you smile.
And perhaps the cat is more than just a bit of fun. It could even be the perfect representative of that infamous “cat pee” aromatic sometimes associated with New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc on the nose. If you don’t know, now you know.
And inside, in Josh’s own words: “It’s 100% Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc — exactly what you’d expect to get in the bottle.”
That line is the whole story.
The wine is not the experiment. The box is.
Why a box, actually
Three reasons. I have already given you the best one.
It stays fresh. A bag inside collapses as you pour, so air never gets in. Josh reckons: “After a week, it tastes like you have just opened it.”
It costs you less. Glass is heavy. Glass breaks. Glass gets shipped across the world in a bottle, in a case, in a container. Take it out and a chunk of the price goes with it.
It is lighter on the planet. Same reason. Less on the ship, less on the truck, less to deal with at your end.
The bottle makes you commit. The box lets you visit.
The clever part: he launched it here first
The XXXL came out in New Zealand in July, and Josh has been open that it was proof of concept. The real target is the United States, where in his words “they are more familiar with premium cask wine.”
Read that again.
He is not trying to convince us. He is testing it quietly at home, where a stumble is survivable, then taking it somewhere that already accepts the format.
That is a rugby brain. You do not run the new lineout move in a final. You run it in pre-season, where getting it wrong costs you a laugh.
What you can do with it
- Stop treating the format as the quality. New Zealand already won this one with screw caps. Box is the same argument, twenty years on.
- Buy the format that matches how you actually drink. Long lunches. A full house. People arriving over three hours. Our tables. Three litres fits.
- Keep the bottle for the moment. A birthday. A gift. Sunday after church. Format is a signal, and a box sends the wrong one there. Own both.
- Check the date on the box. Bag-in-box is not for cellaring. Buy it fresh, drink it inside the year.
Wine Chief takeaway: judge the wine, not the container. The glass was never the point. The glass was just the delivery van.
I do not know whether America will take it. But I like that a family who planted the first vines in Marlborough looked at the most famous white wine on earth and asked a better question. Not “how do we make it fancier?”
“How do we get it to more tables, fresher, cheaper, with less waste?”
And I love that.
Mālō ‘aupito.
Semisi Telefoni — The Wine Chief