Wine Pairings

One product category that has flourished during the pandemic is alcoholic beverages, including wine. From early March through mid-September, wine sales grew 19.3% in volume and 24.7% in dollar sales compared to the same period the previous year, according to Nielsen.

A number of new licensed and collaborative wines, some limited editions and others under long-term deals, have thrown their names into the mix since start of pandemic, with five of the new agreements mentioned below being announced just this month and last month:

• The Royal Horticultural Society is launching its first wine, a rosé, in time for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, currently set for May 2021 in London. The product is being marketed in partnership with Babylonstoren, a South African vineyard and fruit farm. After its debut at the show, it will be sold through independent wine stores and the hospitality industry in the U.K., as well as through the online shop of The Newt in Somerset, a country estate and garden in England. This is the first wine for the RHS, although the organization has offered a wine club.
• Bravo paired with Nocking Point Wines for limited-edition red, white, and rosé wines in two-, three-, six-, or 12-bottle combinations, all tied to the Real Housewives franchise, marking the first wine deal for the brand. Consumers can order the product direct from Nocking Point. Nocking Point also offers a number of celebrity-based wines, and just launched a curated wine club with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers last month.
• New Mexico State University teamed with Lescombes Winery for a cabernet sauvignon called Pistol Pete’s Crimson Legacy. Proceeds from the wine, which has been in the works since 2018, go to the university’s athletics department. The winery is a small business near the institution; the product can be purchased online in 40 states or at the winery.
• Hearst Magazines and its agent IMG teamed with Guarachi Wine Partners for a new label called Uncorked by Cosmopolitan. The brand consists of a selection of Guarachi wines curated by the publication’s editors. Hearst staffers also designed the labels. The partners noted that the young women who read Cosmo overindex on wine drinking and are rarely targeted specifically by wine labels’ marketing efforts. The brand, available on wine.com, includes a rosé, chardonnay, pinot noir, and cabernet sauvignon, all sourced from California. More varietals are in the works.
• Northlane, a Sydney, Australia, metalcore band, released a limited-edition line of wines called the Enemy of the Night collection. Its partner is Crowbar, a music venue and pub in Sydney and Brisbane that also has an online liquor shop. Crowbar has done a number of other “Crow-labs” with musicians and artists.
• Snoop Dogg is working with 19 Crimes on a line of wines, with the first, Snoop Cali Red, debuting in summer 2020. The multiyear deal will see other varietals developed in the future. This product represents the first foray into California wines by 19 Crimes, an Australian company that is known for its augmented-reality labels.
• Actress Cameron Diaz paired with fashion entrepreneur Katherine Power to launch a “clean” organic wine brand called Aveline. The label debuted with a Spanish white and a French rosé, and its products are vegan-friendly and sugar-, concentrate-, and additive-free. The line is sold through Wine.com and retailers in 43 states.

Meanwhile, a number of existing licensed wine ranges have introduced new products during the pandemic. E2 Family Winery expanded the Star Trek Wines brand with a new Klingon Bloodwine and a United Federation of Planets sauvignon blanc. Sarah Jessica Parker and New Zealand-based Invino & Co. released a second sauvignon blanc, after the successful debut of their first in 2019. And just this week British TV presenter Phillip Schofield introduced an Italian rosé as the third in his range of bag-in-the-box wines with When in Rome.

These new introductions represent just a tiny fraction of the licensed and collaborative wine market, of course, which has been a hot segment of the licensing business for several years and has shown no signs of slowing down. In fact, during the lockdown the segment seems to be heating up, albeit largely coincidentally, as these partnerships were in motion before the coronavirus hit. That said, their introductions were timely, given the current pandemic-fueled growth in wine consumption overall.