The Label Project

A month ago, bloggers across the world were sent mysterious packages.

They arrived in wooden crates, which lids slid back to reveal chic black labels that stated “The Label Project” but provide no other evidence to what was inside. First arrived a white, along with three perfume bottles with aromatic hints and a clue to the wines origins. Next came a red, along with chocolates imprinted with the name of the project. A few days later, another red wine arrived, this time with three pictures denoting the landscape the grapes came from.

After submitting their intelligent guesses of the wine’s variety and region of origin to an anonymous email address, bloggers held their breaths. Six would win a trip to Australia to visit mystery winery behind the Label Project. The others would get the pride of knowing if they guessed right or wrong.

Finally, a box arrived that would provide answers.

“When we begun The Label Project, we set out to reveal the true character of our wine by asking you to look beyond the label and discover what’s really inside the bottle,” read part of a letter from Bernard Hickin, the chief winemaker for Jacob’s Creek.

“We wanted to showcase our distinctive wine regions in a way that would capture your imagination and demonstrate our passion for producing high quality wines.”

The first wine was a cool-climate chardonnay from the Adelaide Hills. The second, a classic full-bodied, lush Barossa Valley shiraz and the last, was a complex cabernet sauvignon from the iron-rich soil of Coonawarra. The wines certainly showed the diverse wine regions within the vast landscape of Australia. They also got people thinking.

“The key insight that drove the project was that consumers judge Jacob’s Creek Reserve by their familiarity with the Jacob’s Creek Classic label, but have low awareness of the regional story behind the Reserve,” said Rae Craig, senior brand manager at Corby Distilleries Limited.

“We needed a way to share that Jacob’s Creek Reserve is a range of premium wines that capture the true character of some of Australia’s best wine regions. We wanted to show that Jacob’s Creek Reserve represents quality, made by carefully selecting premium grapes from leading wine regions.”

“And in order to do that we needed them to be able to look beyond the label.”

The Canadian winner was Angela Aiello, founder of the iYellow Wine Club. She’ll hopefully attend a kind of mini blogger conference next March, during vintage in Australia as all the winners gather at Jacob’s Creek.