Form Over Function: Why Some Wineries Are Rethinking the Shape of the Bottle
Picture a wine bottle. What do you imagine? Odds are, you’re seeing something relatively tall and cylindrical, with a narrow neck at the top. Maybe you are visualizing one of the more classically known shapes: the gently-sloping Burgundy bottle or the squared-off Bordeaux bottle. Hell, maybe you’re picturing a Riesling bottle for some reason.
There are a lot of reasons a winery might choose to use one of these extremely widespread bottle shapes for their wines. They’re not just proven over centuries of use, but are instantly recognizable to wine drinkers of all types. They’re also produced in massive quantities by a range of glass manufacturers around the world, and they fit comfortably on store shelves and in wine racks and wine fridges.
Most brands are happy to live in that world of safety and familiarity, but what happens when wineries leave that comfortable conformity behind? What motivates them to latch on to an unusual and in some cases custom-designed bottle shape? Perhaps most importantly: Does it help them sell more wine? And enough to offset increased costs?
Shape as Selling Point
For Suavia, a producer in Italy’s Veneto region, the impetus came from outside the family winery itself. “[A] complaint from many of our partners around the world was that ‘you have a wonderful wine with big personalities, but when we put them on the shelves they disappear,’” says co-owner Alessandra Tessari. “We were not really putting much attention on the design and the exterior part of the product; we were very focused on the product itself.”
Change for Suavia came in 2010, when they introduced their “Massifitti” bottling, made entirely from Trebbiano di Soave, the first varietal expression of that grape on the market. To mark the occasion, they worked with a local manufacturer to design a new bottle, which kind of looks like a Bordeaux bottle that’s been crushed under the weight of its own existence.
While the response to the new bottle shape was positive with Massifitti, it still took Suavia some time to change over their more classical Soave wines. When they finally did, they quickly realized they were on to something. “The first year we changed the bottle, we put the same wines in the new bottle in some particular markets, and we saw almost double the sales [in those markets],” says Tessari, prompting them to bottle all their wines in the new bottle shape starting in 2021.
When Mike Martin was looking to launch a new label, PÁŠXA, it was one of his other business ventures, Passatempo Taverna in Walla Walla, Wash., that pointed him toward a distinctive bottle shape. “I have a restaurant, and I have seen how certain wines — whether the server is carrying them to a table or they’re on the table — are kind of head turners,” says Martin. “It’s the quality of the wine and the producer and the reputation, but sometimes it’s the bottle and the label.”
“This [bottle shape] really stood out, I think, because it was distinctive,” he says, referring to PÁŠXA’s squat, antique Burgundy bottle, which appealed to him because it felt “timeless. It was certainly different, but it wasn’t ornate. It was distinctive, but there weren’t a lot of curves and whatnot on the bottle.” It also had an added benefit that Martin didn’t fully anticipate: “I can’t claim that we did this in view of Instagram, but I think in an Instagrammable world, it definitely helps kind of jump out when people line the bottles up with other things they’ve enjoyed.”
Even if unusual bottle shapes are uncommon in wine, they’re par for the course in other beverage alcohol categories. “When you look at a shelf, everything kind of looks the same in wine,” says Ryan Ayotte, CEO of Roué. “The bottles are generally the same shape. A lot of them have cool labels, but that’s kind of the extent of it. It’s like you’re putting on a cool tie, but everyone’s wearing a suit. When you look at spirits, it’s the complete opposite. There’s practically no two bottles that are the same.”
“The first year we changed the bottle, we put the same wines in the new bottle in some particular markets, and we saw almost double the sales [in those markets].”
Despite having rapper and entrepreneur Future on board as a co-founder, Ayotte knew that Roué needed to grab attention in order to stand out in a very crowded marketplace. Yet just knowing that you want a distinctive bottle isn’t enough; you need to actually design the thing. Roué’s bottles evoke a classic cut- glass or crystal decanter, bulbous in the middle while having a thin neck and a flat bottom, and have a multi-faceted, textured exterior. “The core piece of what we were thinking about is that we felt like our consumers, and Future, are very multi-dimensional,” says Ayotte. “There’s a lot of different facets and a real texture to it; it kind of spoke to that.”
The Price of Individuality
Cost is the biggest obstacle for every producer, not just the cost of paying a designer to work on the bottle, but everything that goes into it. Custom molds need to be made and several test batches have to be produced to ensure that the bottle will be able to withstand the rigors of shipping and general usage. Manufacturers can require a very large order to even get the process started, which can be particularly difficult for a small producer. In PÁŠXA’s case, they ended up buying multiple vintages’ worth of bottles in advance.
Beyond that, often special equipment must be ordered or designed to enable bottling lines to fill these specialty vessels. Custom case packaging needs to be designed and ordered, and, of course, some retailers and restaurants will be hesitant to bring in anything that messes with their carefully constructed shelves, racks, and displays — though that hasn’t stopped major retailers like BevMo! from picking up Roué. Even consumers can balk at the format. “I’ve had some of my friends grimace to me that it doesn’t fit into their wine rack,” Martin says. “That was something I checked on, but of course it doesn’t fit into every wine fridge. That’s OK, though, I kind of joke with them ‘that just means you should drink it right away.’”
The risks of an unconventional bottle are clear, but so too are the potential rewards. For each brand, the bottle shape has become an integral part of their identity, something they hope to never relinquish, even going so far as to own custom molds should they ever need to change manufacturers. Most of all, they put a new spin on wine collecting. “One of the design criteria [we had] is that we wanted people to feel bad about throwing [the bottle] away,” says Ayotte. “We have had a few people send us pictures of them putting flowers in the bottle, or using it as a decanter.” That’s the kind of shelf life any winery would be proud to claim.
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