The International Review of Wine Packaging and Aesthetics, Vol. 13

Bitch
Barossa Grenache; Australia
$16 (Savannah)

[Note: This is the thirteenth installment in a regular Murketing feature. For previous installments and an explanation, go here.]

Let’s face it: If you buy a wine called Bitch, you know full well that you’re buying the label, and whatever’s inside the bottle is pretty much an afterthought.

Many labels that are meant to stand out from old-school “traditional” designs do so by presenting a more approachable, unpretentious image. Bitch, however, is an example of what might be characterized as a ’tude wine, with a label that’s not so much unpretentious as defiant. Of course it’s all in good fun, projecting not hostility, but something like sassy campiness: Presumably most bottles of Bitch are sold to persons on their way to the sorts of dinner parties where such an object passes for a little piece of hilarity.

All of which is, of course, perfectly fine. We are not here to criticize the general idea of design-driven wine selling. We are here to evaluate the execution.

The execution of Bitch is pretty sloppy. The emblem on the cap (of course it’s a cap!) is kind of cool, and the type treatment of the name looks like it required some thought, what with that dagger-T and all. But the dagger/heart trim around the name looks a bit too Hot Topic. And how about springing for, I don’t know, more than one color?

But it is when you glance back matter – the word “bitch” over and over, haw haw – that you can no longer deny that you have been had. The Hot Topic reference point is too generous; Spencer Gifts is more like it. This is a novelty ’tude wine: It doesn’t just look like a joke, it looks like a really cheap joke.

Regarding the actual wine: Terrible, of course.