One of the questions I seem to be asked all the time is “Why use screw caps instead of cork”. Most people seem to associate cork with expensive wine and screw caps with cheap wine, this may have been true 20 or so years ago in the States, but now a days some of the best vineyards in the world are bottling their wines with screw caps. Why?

Well over the last couple of centuries the wine industry has been using more and more cork, however as cork is harvested from trees that are approximately 6 to 9 years old the supply has not managed to keep up with the demand, this has led to a much higher use of pesticides and wood preservatives to get the cork ready sooner. These treatments on the trees are what most people are pointing at to account for the large increase in corked wine.

Corked wine is basically wine that smells and tastes undesirable and the main cause is bad corks. The way this happens is that chemicals (mainly TCA) that can be found in the cork react negatively with the wine and cause the wine to smell and taste bad. If you look at the percentage of wine that is corked you will see the figures sometimes go up to 15%, can you imagine any other industry where this amount of fail rate would be accepted, I doubt it.

Screw caps on the other hand have an almost 0 fail rate (we have been using them since 2004 on our wines and have had no negative feedback), they can also be recycled easily, and have been used to age wine now for many years, even producers in Champagne have aged their wines with screw caps with no told negative impact (most wine is consumed within 24 hours of being bought off the shelf anyway)

For this reason you will find the vast majority of our wine is bottled with screw caps, but if your still keen to use a cork screw, for the meantime you will be pleased to find we still use cork on our reserve range of wines.

(If anyone is wondering about plastic corks they aren’t  great as they are not a memory material so you cant age wine with plastic well, and it can still react negatively with the wine due to the chemicals in the plastic. Also they are very un-eco-friendly)

Technorati Tags:
stormhoek, stormhoek vineyard, stormhoek wine, stormhoke wine, cork top wine, screw top wine

My name is Chris and although I’m originally from the UK,for the last year and a half my job has basically been to help get new clients and then make sure they are well looked after over here in South Africa. Yes I love my job and all my friends are jealous (doing lots of wine tasting’s can be hard don’t you know) and although I do get called a soutie every now and then, generally life is fun in the sun.

This week during one of my rounds to make sure that all the Stormhoek clients in the Cape are pampered and happy, I saw the above sketch in a popular bar called Long Street Cafe, which is surprisingly located in Long street (the main party street) in the city center.

I had sent the owner of the bar some of Hugh Macleod’s  great cartoons in an email a month or so ago as he wanted to use one as a screen saver. After a little catch up chat with him I found out he liked the above cartoon so much he had paid a local artist to copy it onto a 9ft wide and 6 ft high chalk board and hang it above his bar !

If anyone is taking a holiday in Cape Town and wants to go have a look the details are here, not sure how long it will be there for, but if anyone else knows of another ridiculously large version of one of Hugh’s cartoons please let us know.

Technorati Tags:
gaping void wine, gapingvoid wine, hugh macleod wine, stormhoek, stormhoek wine, stormhoke wine, gapingvoid cartoon, gaping void cartoon, hugh macleod cartoon, gapingvoid capetown

Recently we had the pleasure of hooking up in Cape Town with famed new media Marketing Guru Joseph Jaffe.

Jo originally hails from South Africa but found his calling in the USA working as a director at TBWA before becoming President of his own successful new media marketing consulting practice called Crayon  (www.crayonville.com ), as well as writing a number of popular new media marketing books.

While he was visiting Cape Town we helped organise (with the help of local new marketing legend Dave Duarte) a little exclusive geek dinner with the Mother cities Social Media elite. 

The Stormhoek was on tap and Jo very kindly dedicated a copy (his only copy he had bought over for his Mum!!) of his new book “Join the Conversation” to the Cape Town blogging and podcasting community to be passed around. Inside the book he inscribed the kind words – “To the wonderful Cape Town community, I’m proud to represent you in the big US of A and I hope this book inspires, motivates and reflects the power of us“.

Have a look at the video above for a little speech he did if you like or check out his blog at www.jaffejuice.com.

From all at Stormhoek we wish you a fabulous 2008,

Cheers.

Technorati Tags:
gaping void wine, gapingvoid wine, stormhoek, stormhoek wine, stormhoke wine, wine 2.0, jaffejuice, jafejuice, jaffe juice

[One of the thirty cartoons chosen to go on the bottles etc.]

Though Stormhoek generally doesn’t like to sponsor large events, an interesting opportunity came up.

On December 5th we’ll be serving Magnums of Stormhoek on the tables of the British Comedy Awards, which in British Media terms, is a pretty big deal. Lots of celebrities, TV cameras and paparazzi etc.

But rather than just plonk the bottles down on the tables and let the celebs get on with it [i.e. Drink our wine, yet ignore the brand completely- which is what normally happens with these kind of events], we decided to behave a little differently than your average gala sponsor.

We created a range of large bottles [Magnums], each with a different cartoon on it. Thirty cartoons in all.

Because of the event, we decided we didn’t have to worry about playing it safe [unlike say, with your average supermarket client]. So out of my collection of 6,000-odd cartoons, we picked 30 cartoon that were relatively edgy. The one above is a good example. Also, some of the cartoons from this page and this page made it into the mix. Generally, we picked cartoons we thought anybody who had spent a lot of time in the Soho/London/media/entertainment/cokewhore/glamorpussy world would click with. You get the idea.

As everybody will have a different cartoon on each table, we’re hoping people will check out the different bottles on the other tables. Yeah, you got it. Conversation starters. Exactly. “Social Objects”, Baby.

I hope the photographers get some decent pictures…

( Originally posted by Hugh at www.gapingvoid.com )

Technorati Tags:
gaping void wine, gapingvoid wine, stormhoek, stormhoek wine, stormhoke wine, wine 2.0, british comedy awards

[The new Stormhoek front labels. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

[The new Stormhoek back label. Click on image to enlarge etc.]

After many months in development, Stormhoek has finally got its new label designs.

The front label is a fairly classic look [our customers like that a lot]. We had a ball, however, with the back label. Notice how we put both the Blue Monster logo on the back [without any explanation], and also, the Unofficial International “Hacker” symbol. Oh, yeah, we also borrowed the “Change the World or Go Home” tagline from the Blue Monster [Disclosure: gapingvoid is more evil than Microsoft. Just so you know.].

The vast majority who see our wine on the shelf have never heard of us before, have never read gapingvoid, and don’t know us from Adam [The same is true for the vast majority of other wine brands]. So most of the marketing is done on the supermarket shelf. It’s actually pretty intense, thinking about it all.

The funny thing is, people in the trade like the back label SO MUCH there’s already talk happening about Stormhoek being the first wine to have itself stacked on the shelf with the back label facing frontward.

So the Stormhoek hook becomes: “The one with the back label on the front”.

I love that idea… We’ll see what happens.

[UPDATE: Stormhoek Twitter UK Promo:] I’ve been allowed to send sample bottles to anybody who wants one. The deal is, you have to be UK-based, of legal drinking age, and on Twitter. Send me an email if you’re interested, Thanks. Rock on.

(The above was originally posted by Hugh at www.gapingvoid.com )

Technorati Tags:
gaping void cartoon, gaping void wine, gapingvoid wine, stormhoek, stormhoek vineyard, stormhoek wine, stormhoke wine, wine 2.0

South Africa’s fastest growing grocer has embraced web 2.0 with a little hand from Stormhoek, and is giving away wine.

Checkers, with over 120 stores in South Africa’s more affluent suburbs, first pioneered the people-friendly service of a wine route in a store. By selecting half a dozen of the better small vineyard wineries in each of the top 10 wine-tourism destinations, Checkers brought the opportunity to explore South Africa’s wine terroir to the wine drinker’s home turf.

Now with Stormhoek, they are helping Facebook to increase its penetration in the South Africa with an on-shelf promotion, on Stormhoek wines, incentivising Facebook memberships with a chance of free wine for a year as well as weekly Stormhoek prizes. You can only win if you’re a Facebook member. If you’re from the the pre-Facebook generation, the entry form shows you how to become a member.

( If you are outside of SA, join our Facebook group for news on any promotions or offers in your country)

Technorati Tags:
gaping void wine, gapingvoid wine, south african wine, stormhoek wine, stormhoke wine, wine 2.0, stormhoek label

Technorati Tags:
stormhoek facebook

Brought to you by: The Times Multimedia

Technorati Tags:
gaping void wine, gapingvoid wine, stormhoek, stormhoek wine, stormhoke wine, wine 2.0