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Bragdy Gwynant |
The Anatomy of a Great Bar
Nice Package
by Terry Sullivan
It was the Ricky Ricardo replica rum bottle, complete with conga drum and big puffy glass sleeves, that finally did it for me. Found it in a Polish butcher shop, right next to the Armenian brandy in the bottle shaped like a pig. This, I thought, is the end, the apogee of hooch packaging, the very apex of bottling madness. Then a week later I ran into Cheesehead White, the "Wine for the rest of us" from Chateau St. Croix Stadium, in Packers colors with a little rubber wedge of cheddar stuck on top of the cap, and realized that like all holy grails, the search for the ultimate packaging absurdity was about a journey, not a destination.
Call it the Tao of the container. It's an old story, of course, dating from the first guy who figured out that if you were having trouble moving the juice, maybe it would be easier to sell the jug. The floor of the Mediterranean is probably littered with shards of novelty Caesar Augustus amphorae. ("Special for Saturnalia!") Colonial-era distillers were stamping out George Washington-head booze bottles while he was still rowing across the Delaware. Our own time-which some scholars believe may be the Renaissance of Ridiculous Bottling, the Great Awakening of the Wacky Container-yields examples our ancestors could only dream of.
My own collection starts with the grape cluster wine bottles from Gallo, before the Napa Valley got serious about things, and the giant Galliano tower with the spigot that graced so many saloons in my youth. (Golden Cadillac, anyone?) I only wish I'd saved the 36" tall bottle of cheap red wine that I once won in a (very bad) barroom raffle-the one with a neck that was a winding snake with a cork in its mouth. I have a friend for whom holidays mean that it's time to break out the Cherry Heering bottle she inherited from her mother, the bottle that plays Jingle Bells when you lift it from its base.
Lest you think that these things are all relics, I call your attention to the New York Times of this most recent Christmas past, in which we meet a young woman in an east coast boite beguiled by a vodka bottle illuminated by its own green-glowing lighted stand. She "leaned forward.and ran a finger along the bottle's embossed serpent coiled around its middle and its silver snakehead spout. 'I like it,' she said."
I'm not, of course, complaining about beautiful bottles. Some of our most revered distillers have poured extraordinary spirits into Baccarat and Lalique decanters at hefty prices, but these are meant to be kept (and no doubt refilled with less extraordinary spirits.) Grappa makers have managed to separate over-bonused brokers from many hundreds of dollars for Piemontese eau de vie poured into delicately blown glass fantasies. (Why the French, the very people who invented parfumery packaging, never cashed in on this with marc is a mystery.) Nor am I talking about more ordinary, but unusually attractive bottles.
For every palm-perfect Glenrothes bottle, there is a Jazz Vodka, in a transparent trumpet. ($17.95 for 750 ml-you could look it up.) For every signature Johnnie Walker bottle there is a Sniper Vodka in a replica AK-47 container with a screw-cap on the end of the barrel. We won't, of course, entertain the question of why so many vodkas are poured from these less-than-traditional bottles (that would be churlish), but the clear spirit is currently being marketed inside Thompson submachine gun bottles, matryoshka (those little Russian nesting dolls), the Chrysler Building, a pirate ship, and my favorite, a Statue of Liberty with a head that screws right off. The eponymous Bong bottle you already know about, and have probably been disappointed to discover that it is, in fact, just a bottle.
Eastern Europe currently contributes red wine, brandy, and assorted liqueurs in nearly life-size violins, ballerina's toe shoes, charging bulls, copper-colored monkeys, and Santa himself (in a lovely polka-dot suit). I have seen, but resisted purchasing, tequila in giant blue snails, full-length muskets, and glass Colt .45s. A packaging-award winner from China includes liquor stored in your choice of male or female torsos, both with a keyed, anti-theft top.
I recently sat on a panel to rate some of the industry's newest packaging offerings, and I can report that we are in the era of the big shoulders. No fewer than four different spirits are being marketed in art deco, rectilinear bottles with a vaguely Superman-ish shape-narrow bottoms tapering to square shoulders below a short neck. Much as one hates to encourage him, Trump vodka in this bottle is actually a tasteful presentation, including the simple "T" logo. Even the 24 -karat gold applied to the sides manages to be unobtrusive. The unfortunately-named Pinky Vodka is in a similar reverse-taper bottle, as is the purple-to-violet hued bottling of Hendrix Electric Vodka, complete with Jimi's 'fro on the front, and a more restrained series of gins from North Shore Distillers.
The cutest entry was a mescal in a very nice, but mysteriously pumpkin-shaped, bottle. Blind Date wine is, I believe, the first fermenter to offer you a chance to compete on a website to have your personal face on their label. Sadly, the most attractive bottles in the bunch, while being pure design triumphs, looked exactly like spa products-ushering in the danger that your date might very well mistake your flavored vodka for a moisturizer and rub it on her face.
Whiskey drinkers are, of course, among the most fortunate customers. Malt whisky and bourbon makers seem content to let the actual contents sell the bottles. The last great breakthrough was Mr. Daniel's discovery over 110 years ago that square bottles packed better in crates than round ones. Most folks seem happy to let tradition stand; witness the Glenfiddich triangle and the return to the wide-mouth Highland Park beaker. The oddest whisky container extant is the sainted, and beautiful, Haig and Haig dimpled Pinch bottle. (The Thin Man's regular tipple, by the way.)
The aforementioned Glenrothes "sample" bottle left a lot of other distillers slapping their foreheads with a Homeric "Doh!" that they hadn't thought of it, but it's generally a conservative business that correctly assumes that most of the customers are not going to be swayed by a giant glass barley grain, a 750 ml replica of Robert the Bruce, or a sheep's head decanter. The exception, of course, is the Beam collection of historic and strange pottery bottlings, but I'm going to forgive them because it started a long time ago and it's really more in the tradition of Toby jugs than a desire to remove cash from the pockets of moronic denizens of VIP rooms in trendoid clubs.
Meanwhile, I'm not above cashing in on those same deluded youth. As we speak, I have a team of crack chemists running round-the-clock experiments to discover whether neutral spirits will remain tasteless and clear in conjunction with globs of warm, undulating paraffin. Things work out right, you'll be able to purchase Lava-Lite, the only combination vodka bottle and bedside lamp on the planet. Carb-free and available in a wide range of colors, $129.95 a copy.
Other Whisky-Related Classics:
Nice Package |
The Anatomy of a Great Bar
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