The Newest Alcohol Marketing Gimmick: Perfume-Inspired Wine

It's soooooo hard for women to pick a wine for dinner. There's so many different varietals, and vintages, and labels, and vineyards, and ohmygosh what's a girl to do? Well, grappa distillery Mazzetti d’Altavilla thinks it has found the solution with its Essentia Vitae: wine bottles that look like perfume bottles. The "scents" are numbered, just like perfume! No 4 Ruche is jasmine-scented, No 6 Malvasia smells like rose and No 8 Moscato smells like violet. Or, if you mix them all together, you can have a mouthful of potpourri!

Product Launch Analytics has awarded the perfume-wine (available in Germany and Italy) theinnovation of the week, with PLA director Tom Vierhile explaining "Essentia Vitae goes further than most to connect to female consumers. Its perfume-like packaging should break through the crowded product assortments that can often confound shoppers."

While Vierhile does have a point that the wine market can leave the novice drinker a bit overwhelmed, it seems even more confusing to sell a perfume bottle with contents meant for drinking, not dabbing lightly on one's wrists. It is only a matter of time until some poor woman accidently confuses her bottles and starts chugging actual perfume.

Perhaps wine blogger Dr. Vino captures it best: "Dammit, marketers, gendered approaches to marketing are best left to important things like razors blades and deodorants!"