Is This the Beginning of Juice Box Wine?

Mike Veseth

11 years ago

Juice Box globalization was one of three wine market scenarios that I proposed in a talk I gave in January 2013 at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento (you can read a brief summary of my remarks here). I was inspired by the Minute Maid apple juice box pictured in the slide above.

You think of Minute Maid as an American brand and goodness knows that we grow lots of apples here, but in fact it has become a globally sourced product. The generic apple juice in that box could come from the U.S. or Argentina, Austria, Chile, China, Germany or Turkey (or any combination of them, I suppose). The brand is the thing here — country of origin is almost literally a footnote and apple variety is a complete non-issue.

Is juice box wine possible — wine pretty much stripped of variety and place of origin? Many heads nodded yes in the audience as I asked the question. Just a matter of time as global sourcing of wine becomes a key supply side factor and strong brand identity continues to grow in importance on the demand side. Juice box wine isn’t the only direction wine is headed, I suggested, but it is one possibility.

Barefoot Makes an Impression

And now it is here (although perhaps not for the first time). Gallo’s Barefoot brand has introduced a new red blend wine, Barefoot Impression, made from grapes grown on four continents, according to a recent report in the Modesto Bee.

Impression Red Blend is the 22nd product from Barefoot, which Gallo has built into the nation’s top-selling brand. The blend includes grenache from Spain, shiraz from Australia, malbec from Argentina and tempranillo from California.

Impression joins 14 still wines and seven sparkling wines, all made from California grapes, in the Barefoot portfolio. Barefoot winemaker Jennifer Wall describes the new wine as “a smooth red blend with dark fruit flavors, framed by notes of sweet vanilla and spice.” It has a suggested retail price of $6.99.

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Lost in Space?

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A quick trip to my local Safeway store revealed Barefoot Impression on the shelf along with other inexpensive red blends. The purple footprint was part of the typically attractive Barefoot package. But I was more interested in what the package didn’t say than what it did. No vintage year. No listing of the grape varieties used. And no listing at all of place of origin.

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Whereas the Barefoot Zinfandel I found proudly boasted Lodi as its birthplace, and “California” appeared on several varieties (the Pinot Grigio in my store was an American appellation), I could not find any geographical designation at all for the Impression. I guess it makes sense — a multi-vintage blend has no year and a multi-continental blend has no specific point of origin (although there would be nothing to stop Barefoot from providing this information if they wanted to).

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Message in the Bottle

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Will consumers care that there is no vintage year or appellation? Some might question the wine if they look for traditional year-variety-origin references. But Barefoot has created their own narrative (see video below), which is very much in the Barefoot spirit and very appealing, too, and I am sure the marketing team has discovered that at least some Barefoot drinkers respond to the progressive social message more effectively than they would to a more traditional alternative.

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Is Barefoot Impression the beginning of an important trend? Impression probably isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last wine in this category. Watch this space for future reports.

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