How to Decode Wine Marketing and Get Bottles That Live Up to the Hype

Those labels wine merchants affix to bottles, touting a ‘staff pick’ or ‘hidden gem,’ are meant to move product. But do they serve the customer? Our wine columnist unpacks popular buzzwords and recommends bottles that warrant them.

USE YOUR WORDS The language of wine marketing can seem straightforward enough. But what do those buzzwords really say about a bottle?

ILLUSTRATION: FABIO BUONOCORE

By Lettie Teague
Jan. 6, 2022 2:52 pm ET

WALK INTO MOST any wine shop and you’ll likely see signs touting a “hidden gem” or a “staff pick” or perhaps even an “unsung hero” or two. If you’re wondering what these terms really mean, you’re not alone.

Is a staff pick a wine a staffer actually loves or one the wine merchant needs to move? Similarly, is a hidden gem truly special but little known, or simply a bottle that has sat on the shelf a little too long? I recently queried retailers about why they attach certain phrases to certain bottles. In the process I found some wines that truly lived up to their buzzwords.

“Staff pick” is surely the most commonplace term in retail wine sales. But the value of such a selection depends on the knowledge and palate of the staff in question. Daniel Posner, proprietor of Grapes the Wine Company in White Plains, N.Y., called the term “kind of generic and vanilla,” but he nevertheless employs it because, he said, his clients trust his staff. “If we put our name on something, it means something!” he wrote in an email.

Like many retailers, Mr. Posner sends sales offers to customers via email and, in addition to the ubiquitous “staff picks,” these emails also feature wines described as “back up the truck” and “screaming value,” which Mr. Posner explained is better than a merely “good” value (not to mention more dramatic).

Is a ‘staff pick’ a wine a staffer loves or one the merchant needs to move?

Mr. Posner sent me a list of some wines he had described with these phrases, and I bought a few of each type. The staff pick, the 2019 Domaine Joël Curveux Pouilly-Fuissé En Recepey ($23), is a white Burgundy whose quality “floored” Mr. Posner and his staff. Marked by an energetic acidity and a mineral finish, the wine left me with a good impression of the taste of his staff.

I was less keen on Mr. Posner’s “back up the truck” choice, the Château de la Noblesse Bandol Rosé ($20). It was pleasant but didn’t convince me I needed a truckload of the stuff. But I was more than pleased by Mr. Posner’s “crowd-pleaser” pick, the 2018 Zorzal Gran Terroir Malbec ($16), which he described as a “perfect wine for dinners at home.” Plush, marked with red and dark fruit, it was accessible in both style and price, a wine I’d be happy drinking alone or in a crowd. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the only so-called crowd-pleaser wine I tried that was good. I purchased five more bottles other retailers had identified as such, including unsatisfying Malbecs and insipid Sauvignon Blancs (two grapes that consistently rank as crowd favorites). In these cases, the crowd-pleaser moniker signaled wines that were mediocre or worse.

I didn’t see any wines pegged as “crowd-pleasers” in the Gary’s Wine & Marketplace store in Wayne, N.J. When I found owner Gary Fisch wandering the aisles, he confessed he avoids crowd-pleaser wines himself. He considers the term synonymous with “cheap.”

Mr. Fisch is, however, exceptionally fond of the buzzword “over-deliver.” I regularly receive emails from his staff touting wines this way. “It means we are giving you a wine of greater value than its price [would suggest],” he said.

I bought a couple of wines that Mr. Fisch told me not only over-deliver but are also staff picks: the 2019 Donna Laura Ali Toscana ($10), a Tuscan red (90% Sangiovese and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon) that was a favorite of staff member Donna Garvey (whose taste I trust), and the 2016 Gota Bergamota ($15), a red from the Dão region of Portugal. Both were pleasant, easy drinking reds, reasonably priced.

For a term presumably meant to apply to wines that are difficult to detect, “hidden gem” comes up with remarkable frequency. At the Bottle King in Wayne, N.J., I found several so-called hidden gems front and center. One of them, the 2018 Las Huertas Cabernet Sauvignon ($10), was stacked in a large tower of bottles—a gem perhaps, but certainly not hard to locate.

I queried Bottle King’s director of marketing and ecommerce, Daniel Lipman, and he explained in an email that his team uses the term to highlight a wine that isn’t well known or is a second label of an established producer. “The Las Huertas Cabernet Sauvignon is produced by Domaines Barons de Rothschild at the Los Vascos winery in Chile,” he said. “In that regard, it becomes a hidden gem from Rothschild—a value Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile, made under their quality standards, for $10 a bottle.”

If the emails I receive regularly from Sherry-Lehmann Wine & Spirits in New York City are to be believed, no store stocks as many “unsung heroes,” particularly the unsung heroes of Bordeaux. The store’s general manager, Matt Wong, explained that he considers the “lesser” wines, aka petits chateaux, of Bordeaux heroic because they are often overlooked by Bordeaux lovers focused on the (pricier) classified growths.

“We at Sherry-Lehmann made a conscious decision to educate our clients on the often-overlooked petits chateaux and remind customers that everyday great Bordeaux shouldn’t break the bank,” Mr. Wong wrote in an email. “In response...we created a 12-bottle sampler of our favorite lesser-known petits chateaux that we call Unsung Heroes of Bordeaux.”

I didn’t want to commit to buying a full case but I did want to taste the wines, so I asked Mr. Wong to choose the three wines he liked best from the Unsung Heroes of Bordeaux collection. The bottles that I bought ranged between $10 and $15 a bottle. Two were pleasant if rather forgettable, but the 2019 Château L’Orangerie Bordeaux Supérieur ($14) stood out. This 85% Merlot red was nicely concentrated with pleasantly ripe fruit. I don’t know that I’d call it heroic, but it was certainly appealing and easy to drink.

I’m not convinced that the words chosen to market wines always mean very much—or, certainly, mean the same thing from store to store. But I would rather try to decode these terms than see stores simply display numerical scores. A number is so finite; it closes down conversation. A “staff pick,” meanwhile, could be an invitation to chat with the store’s staff.

OENOFILE

Wines that live up to the marketing labels attached to them

1. Staff Pick: 2019 Domaine Joël Curveux Pouilly-Fuissé En Recepey $23

This vibrant white Burgundy is a staff favorite at Grapes the Wine Company in White Plains, N.Y. Marked by a lively acidity and a long, minerally finish, it’s now a favorite of mine, too.

2. Unsung Hero: 2019 Château L’Orangerie Bordeaux Supérieur $14

The ”unsung” small chateaux of Bordeaux certainly provide an affordable, and in the case of this soft, densely fruited, Merlot-dominant offering, a deliciously drinkable introduction to the region.

3. Hidden Gem: 2018 Las Huertas Cabernet Sauvignon $10

The Rothschild name attached to an affordable Chilean Cabernet qualifies it as a “hidden gem” at Bottle King in Wayne, N.J. This wine also happens to be attractive and full of red fruit.

4. Crowd-Pleaser: 2018 Zorzal Gran Terroir Malbec $16

A wine dubbed a “crowd-pleaser” is too often simple and one-dimensional. Yet this dense, full-bodied Argentine Malbec marked by red and dark fruit—while still broadly appealing—is a cut above.

5. Over-Deliverer: 2016 Gota Bergamota Dão $15

This smooth, fruity, rather straightforward red from a little-heralded region in Portugal “over-delivers” for the price. Gary Fisch of Gary’s Wine & Marketplace in New Jersey and California pegs it as a staff favorite as well.