business strategy

It’s 2008. Table wine is still evil? Apparently so. Just like there are a shocking number of dog and lizard labels, the TTB database also reveals a humongous number of labels overflowing with “evil” and “sin.” They are virtually in a sumo match for who can be most evil. It’s tough to top a skull and crossbones, as in the Irish Death Ale label above. But then, it makes no claim to be pure in its evil ways, and so the Grateful Palate rises to the occasion yet again to bring us unmitigated, Pure Evil. It is a South Australia Chardonnay that is “Perfectly wrong.”

During the past 20 months TTB has approved several dozen absinthe brands. Almost all are produced in Switzerland, France, and the US — points west of the Czech Republic. Above shows two of the earliest-approved products made in the Czech Republic, approved a few days ago. This is significant due to a long rivalry between Czech and non-Czech absinthes. The Czech products are somewhat different, and these Stromu products show it well:  they have added flavors rather than herbs added before the final distillation; the proof is somewhat higher; Djabel suggests lighting the product on fire (back label). The latter is frowned upon by most other producers, to put it mildly. We would also expect many absinthe brands to fight over the trademark rights to the Green Fairy name; this term has long been applied to numerous absinthes all over the world. Here is a list of the first 20 or so absinthe products approved for US sale. This also shows the massive leadtime sometimes required to bring an alcohol beverage product to market in the US. For Djabel: the importer got formula approval on July 11, 2008 (see item 11 on Djabel COLA); the importer probably applied for formula approval 1-2 months earlier, in...

TTB gets a lot of labels. For this brand alone, it appears the brewer submitted over 1,500 labels since 2003. Why? There are many reasons why brewers submit multiple variations for a given brand (state deposit rules, container sizes, alcohol content, etc.). But here, it is probably mass customization. Due to advances in printing, small run labels are becoming increasingly common. It’s not always necessary to submit every permutation, but here are three:  above, Syracuse, wide stance.