The bottles of the cuvée baptized with humor -
Chapelle Bérard
A Girondin winegrower has launched a wine labeled “Test Covid”.
Supposed to be confidential, it has been very successful.
It offers other original labels that aim to catch the eye.
He then relies on the quality of his wine to convince consumers.
The cuvée is ephemeral and there are few bottles left for sale.
You will resume well ... a touch of humor.
"Instructions: pour yourself a tall glass of wine and smell it, if you can smell it, taste it and if you can smell it and taste it, you don't have the Covid."
"And below, a small comment:" Yesterday evening, I took the test several times, and it was always negative.
"
This is the message that can be read on the bottles of the cuvée marketed since November 11 by Jean-Christophe Mauro, winemaker at Chapelle Bérard in Saint-Quentin-de-Caplong, in the Gironde.
" It's extraordinary !
"
When he had the idea of "tinkering" with a label with his stitching machine which he used to add legal notices to his bottles, after having discussed it "at the café" with fellow winegrowers, Jean-Christophe Mauro was far from suspecting the success awaiting its “Covid test” vintage.
“We had 2,800 bottles, we just added 1,800 with a new vintage, but we won't hold out for long.
It's extraordinary !
», Comments the winegrower who works in organic farming.
Since a first report by France Bleu in Besançon, many media have contacted him.
“I was even interviewed by Quebec national radio!
»He specifies.
He and his sales representative had a hard time coping with the many requests generated by the cuvée that was part of a joke.
Some 600 bottles will be shipped to Reunion in a few days.
For those who would like to get some, you have to go to the domain's online store and be careful, there won't be something for everyone.
Dust off the image of Bordeaux
The goal of the game is that the consumer attracted by the label fun, is seduced by the quality of the drink.
"With packaging without constant product quality, you sell one bottle but not two", summarizes Jean-Christophe Mauro.
The Covid vintage offers organic red wine, vintages of 2015 and 2016. “It is a wine that combines the tannic mass with the aromatic elegance of the fruit”, points out the winemaker.
“I find it funny the contrast between the label very out of frame and the conservatism that we are sometimes criticized in the Bordeaux sector,” he adds.
The goal of the label, beyond making people smile, is to set it apart from its competitors.
“On the majority of Bordeaux bottles, we find gold gilding, a view of the castle and five diagonal rows of vines,” he analyzes.
And when you've been offering the same visual for fifty years or more, you no longer surprise your customers.
We have a much less sexy product presentation than in other regions.
"
Anxious to dust off the image of Bordeaux wines a little, he wants to break the codes in force.
"In the hinterland of Bordeaux, we are the little Bordeaux, it is better to be uninhibited and fully assume the authenticity of our terroirs which are interesting rather than wanting to resemble the first classified growths", he says. .
Soon other ideas?
Jean-Christophe Mauro is not at his first attempt.
He has already launched “the wine that slams his mother”, which he presents as a gateway to more sophisticated wines for a younger and sometimes less sophisticated clientele.
This cuvée does not make up for the shortfall of this operator, linked in particular to the closure of restaurants, but "smoothes out the losses a little", he concedes.
Above all, he finds that it is “a nice springboard” to consider deconfinement.
This cuvée will remain ephemeral but it should not stop there for all that with its “transgressive labels”.
“We will have other things to tell,” he promises.
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