Hansen Chinese Cabernet priced at €500 (by decanter.com)

Chateau Hansen’s vineyards near the Gobi desert.

Chinese winery Chateau Hansen, based on the edge of the Gobi Desert, is set to sell a new icon wine for €500 a bottle in its home market.

 

Hansen, based in Wuhai, Inner Mongolia, is poised to release the new wine, a single varietal Cabernet Sauvignon called Red Camel, this summer.

Up to 10,000 bottles of Red Camel will be produced, sourced from a single parcel of vines in organic vineyards in the neighbouring region of Ningxia.

The grapes are harvested in two waves: the first batch, making up about two-thirds of the blend, when the grapes reach about 12% alcohol; and the second very late, when the vines are bare and the grapes are beginning to shrivel.

 
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Sex Sells For Menage a Trois (by Jennifer Ashcroft)

 

 

A Californian brand with a risqué name is seducing U.S. wine drinkers. Jennifer Ashcroft has the story.

American consumers are flocking in their millions to have a threesome. The brazen Californian wine brand Ménage à Trois has made conservative drinkers choke on their claret with its sexual-innuendo-filled marketing, but as the latest figures show, sex really does sell.

Named as Wine Brand of the Year in 2009 by U.S. beverage industry publication Market Watch, it continues to be hot property, with sales up 13 percent to $61.5 million in the past 12 months. These impressive figures place Ménage à Trois among the biggest-selling brands in the country, behind Chateau Ste. Michelle, Cupcake Vineyards and Robert Mondavi Private Selection, according to Wines & Vines magazine.

But for its savvy owners, Trinchero Family Estates, Ménage is not the biggest seller. That position is reserved for the company’s first brand, Sutter Home. Nevertheless, Ménage à Trois has “done well because that’s a slightly risqué name and even people that don’t know French know what that term means,” says Dr Liz Thach, a Master of Wine and professor of management and wine business at Sonoma State University in California.

Catchy names that are easy to pronounce and remember are proving popular with more-casual wine drinkers in the U.S., and retailers’ shelves are steadily filling with gimmicky labels, such as Gnarly Head and Cupcake Vineyards.

Thach praises Ménage à Trois for its “phenomenal marketing.” The double entendre of the brand’s name is only the beginning. Sexual innuendos abound on the brand’s website, with wines described as being “guaranteed to satisfy,” “ready to make you its latest conquest” and “the perfect threesome.”

While the company’s public relations specialist, Carissa Abazia, believes that Ménage à Trois resonates with consumers because of its approachable style, price and slightly “edgy” name, some more-traditional consumers view it less favorably. Are the producers scraping the bottom of the barrel in a bid to sell some grape juice?

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