Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/123973
You already know the paradigmatic wine industry customers of the future, Jason and Jen Millennial. They're young, ambitious and have a taste for wine. They know no brand loyalty. There they are now, walking up to a shelf of wine at a pharmacy or grocery store or other alternative outlet they, on impulse, choose to visit. They're picking up some wine on their way to a TV-commercial-worthy activity – climbing or kayaking or playing a sexually evocative contact sport on the beach or in a slough of mud. They may not know it, but they're about to make a decision that affects the future of the American wine industry. For the last several years, the wine industry has been Millennialobsessed, churning out brands, highlighting offbeat grapes and sponsoring promotional events with all kinds of "Choose me! Choose me!" co-marketing deals designed to influence Jen and Jason. And now there's a new thing. To attract the wandering eyes of young adults, the very same wine industry that held for 50 years that American wine depended on the creation of soft-focus ambience de Provence is deploying a new weapon in the war for Millennial mindshare. The graying and comfortable wine industry is leaning close to Jason and Jen's ear and whisper- AT A GLANCE + Flexible pouches are being positioned as the perfect wine packaging for Millennials. + Pouches are light, unbreakable and allow ample branding space. + Some wineries have expe- rienced issues with short shelf life of wine in pouches. + Controlling dissolved oxy- gen at the filling stage can solve shelf-life issues. w w w. v w m media.com ing the secret of future prosperity: nally called AstraPouch and now plastics. branded as Impaq, to license the OK, it's a little more complicated pouch technology from its South than that. The plastics we're talkAfrican developers and bring it to ing about are pouches that generthe United States. ally hold about 1.5 liters of wine "It's the Millennial wine drinker and have caught the imagination of that's driving this," he said. "I grew the wine marketers whose job it is up opening my lunchbox and havto capture the ing a Capri Sun. discretionary This (drinking dollars of Jen out of pouches) and Jason. The is not strange plastic pouch to us." wine segment The advanis too new to tages of the have actual data pouch were to back up the obvious to claims, but the Moynihan. It's anecdotal evilight, unbreakdence and buzz able, and keeps are strong, the wine fresh opportunities for up to four seem endless, weeks after and the logic is it has been clear. opened. In Still, one can an ice chest, imagine the it chills more ghosts of Robquickly than a ert Mondavi, glass bottle. André TchelistThere is also cheff and even an environold Gustave mental claim David Moynihan of Impaq brought the Niebaum – the to be made: wine pouch concept to the United States. legends who that pouches worked their produce less whole lives to class-up American carbon than glass in their manufacwine culture – clustered around turing and transport. The layout of their heavenly Skype, watching the the pouch enables large, full-color goings-on below and wondering, printing – "serious brand equity," WTF? as Moynihan puts it. And all of that, together, makes pouches an actual competitive advantage when trying BORN OF BOYCOTTS to sell to Millennials. Although the concept may seem "It's the perfect packaging," said fairly new to American wine drinkChristophe de Carbonnieres, maners, pouch packaging evolved in aging director of Smurfit Kappa, a South Africa decades ago, as a competitor of Moynihan's that sells reaction to boycotts of that counpouch packaging beyond the bevertry's apartheid policy. Unable to age industry. "If you go camping, manufacture glass and unsure of hiking, boating, you don't have to their ability to get bottles from carry the glass. With this type of overseas, ingenious manufacturpackaging, you run no risk of havers started putting everything liquid ing it break in your bag, and when into plastic pouches: soup, spayou're done, you just fold it and it's ghetti sauce, baby food, even wine. not taking up much space." It was David Moynihan, a veteran of Constellation Brands, who FROM BOTTLE TO POUCH introduced the wine pouch to North America. He left Constellation in Impeccable though that reason2009 and founded a startup, origiing may be, very few U.S. wineries M a y - J u n e 2 0 13 | V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T 41