Myself, I’m not much of a wine fancier, so I always just buy the cheapest box in the cooler.
Do you like an animal on your wine label?
I was tempted to buy Fish Eye wine based on the label. But then I went in a different direction altogether.
I’m more likely to base the decision on the color of the glass.
Interesting.
I’ve noticed a trend towards clever wine names, and the animal thing is part of that. “Little Black Dress”, “Little Penguin”, “Fish Eye” - they’re all examples of wine that I categorize as “cheap wine aimed at people who don’t know much about wine.”
Not to say that it’s all undrinkable. But I’ve never had a wine with a clever name stand out as something special, either. Just sort of all the same - soft, round, mildly fruity, not a lot of tannin or structure, and marketed toward people who like wine, but don’t consider themselves especially knowledgeable about it.
I’d guess it’s because it’s a lot easier to remember “Jest Red” over “2003 Guigal Gigondas”, especially considering that Guigal (and many other producers) puts out a whole slew of wines with the exact same label, only the wording is different.
I saw a short newsish bit on wine recently, and they said that industry insiders call wines with critters on the label “chick wines” - not my term, and yes, that is amazingly sexist - but they say that it’s primarily women buying animal-branded wines.
They also cited Yellow Tail, which used to be sold under the name Carramar with dismal sales. They dinked up some offbeat typography and added the kangaroo, and the stuff started selling like crazy.
Fat Bastard wine:
I make sure the wine is within my price range, has interesting artwork on the label, and has a comment card with:
. . . a saucy minx redolent with the summer sweetened heavy aroma of Georgia peaches, East Indies peppercorns and a frisson of crisp melon as a chaser.
I love those over the top descriptions. Maybe the copywriter was busy sampling the products a bit too much?
I’m not much of a wine drinker but when I do pick out a bottle I avoid cute labels. I go for the basic ones on the assumption that if the producers are so concerned about attracting buyers that they have to make an eye popping label, how good is the wine, really?
The same goes for whiskey/bourbon.
This thread title made me chuckle.
I’m neither for nor against them. But anything that gets more people to drink and enjoy wine is a good thing in my book.
I’m at the wine shop every other day or so, and while I definitely check out all the cutesy labels (packaging geek), they’re not usually what inspires me to pick up or buy a wine, but occasionally I will.
Earlier this week I picked up a few of them including ‘Goats do Roam’, ‘The Ball Baster’, ‘Bitch’, and ‘Stu Pedasso.’ (Say the last one fast - and avoid the Zin Port, it’s disgusting.)
I think of them as ‘starter’ wines - marketed towards the early 20’s just getting into wine. They’re usually very approachable and sometimes decent values.
You know, I was going to reply again and say it was really more of a combo of the OP’s name and thread title that made me chuckle, but as I glanced over my previous entry I realized I misspelled a wine as The Ball Baster instead of The Ball Buster, which just made me giggle all over again for some reason. I blame the wine of course. 
Well, a Mad Dog is an animal . . . as is a Thunderbird . . .
I’m not aware of having done so, but if we’re allowed a broad definition of “animal”, I could certainly imagine it happening.
You know, that’s me exactly. Except I do tend to avoid wines with the overly “cutesy” labels as the few I’ve had were always “meh” or “eww.” But those types of wines (the less than $15 ones) are really all I can afford, so I’m sort of stuck in that bracket of quality. I would love to try Chateau Margaux, but really, if I can’t find it for less than $20, it’s probably not going to happen.
I have tried Alice Tail, though. It was underwhelming. For a wine to underwhelm me, it must be pretty bad.
Sometimes they’ll sneak an animal into the label in a foreign language, to get you to buy it subliminally! The french do this a lot, labelling their wines “chat eau” this and “chat eau” that. And for those of us in the know, “chat eau” means cat water!!! Apparently cat urine is a special additive for many of their export wines.
It can’t be pure cat urine, though. That tastes a lot sharper.
[sub]nod to PTerry[/sub]
I skip any wines where the animal on the label is performing any toilet function. Also avoid any wines with the foreign phrase caveat emptor anywhere on the bottle.
Used to be the uneducated (which is the vast majority of people buying a bottle of wine) would go in and grab the Gallo. Otherwise you were in the “wine lottery of similar unapproachable labels.”
Then it became popular for big liquor companies to release approachable labels - they have names like Turning Leaf. Or a few recognizable California labels like Beringer became approachable.
Now there are several kinds of approachable labels - the animal labels. The “hey, I recognize that name” label (Greg Norman, Coppola), the edgy labels (Fat Bastard, Brothers in Arms - we had a nice Brothers in Arms Cab-Shiraz last night).
Because there are so many labels, you have to distinguish yourself somehow. Only a few labels are going to be able to stand out on taste. Most are going to stand out on label. There are a few wines I’ve had where I’ve gone on a search - and wines that get recommended that you look for - but someone has got to buy the first bottle and taste it - and that is where the label will play. (We had an Alice White cab on vacation that I’ve been to three Twin Cities liquor stores (here you have to go to a liquor store to buy anything other than 3.2 beer) and none of them carry Alice White).
Yellow Tail is a decent cheap wine. No one is going to call it complex (except their copywriter - who writes very amusing descriptions with suggestions that - well, if I bothered to cook a nice lamb in mint sauce, I wouldn’t be bothering with a cheap wine) - but we can get it on sale for $4 a bottle and aren’t disappointed. Doesn’t exactly stand up next to the Caymus that is also down on the rack (actually the Yellowtail is in a box - it isn’t worth racking).
For my last birthday, my brother didn’t bother to plan ahead. So he shows up at my house clearly straight from the grocery store. Among my birthday gifts was a bottle of wine. And, yes, it had an animal label: Something Loon (Shrieking Loon? Smoking Loon?). It wasn’t very good, but the label was very pretty.
I don’t currently have any animal wines. It’s a gap in my wine cellar.
I like a white wine that’s not too sweet and costs about $12.00-14.00 Canadian. Bonus points for an attractive label and a saucy name. I was given a bottle with some frogs on the label, but it was kind of meh.
There’s a BC wine called Naked Grape I like. I’ve learned that I don’t like an ‘oaky’ taste in my wine.
Fat Bastard is really popular for our office functions. It makes people feel naughty, I think.
Yes, I would try a wine with an animal on the label. I’m not a connas… conneis… conass… wine expert.
Do the Smothers Brothers count as “animals?”
I once bought a bottle of wine that had a gold monkey embossed on the bottle itself, not the label. I mostly bought it for the bottle because I like cool bottles. The wine wasn’t too spectacular but at least it didn’t taste like it came from monkeys.
Guilty. The thing is, I’ve had wine that was classified as really good wine, and I’ve had really cheap wine, and even if there is a mild difference, which I don’t always think there is, after the first few sips, who cares? Yellow tail was a favorite of mine until I got 3 really, really bad bottles (chardonnay) in a row. Undrinkable bad. All things being equal (cheap, no talk about pepper in the description), I’ll usually pick the bottle with the better-designed label and/or cleverer name. And I like blue bottles. Blue Nun is always excellent, and always under $5.
(I am picky about food being high quality and love to cook gourmet meals, but I’m too cheap for expensive wine.)