Jody Bogle and Paul Englert with the initial Element[al] collection and an aluminum disc from which a single bottle would be stretched.
Four glasses of white wine were before me. I only was told that they were Chardonnay, one from each of four brands of Bogle Family Wine Collection, including their latest, Element[al].
I was asked to pick the Element[al], the first brand of wines in the country to be packaged in an aluminum container that mimics the size and shape of a traditional wine bottle. The other three were poured from standard glass bottles.
Much to the delight if not the surprise of my hosts, Jody Bogle, the winery’s vice president of consumer relations, and Paul Englert, Bogle’s vice president of marketing, I blew it.
All the wines represented Chardonnay with freshness and fidelity. They varied in weight, roundness and complexity, but all adhered to Bogle’s way of interpreting Chardonnay with balance and brightness.
The second from the left, I concluded, was the one that had been poured from aluminum rather than glass. It was lighter and leaner than the others, with a thread of minerality that could be attributed to the wine’s pitched acidity. Just the sort of direct and friendly Chardonnay that a winery would put in an aluminum can, I felt.
Wrong! The wine second from the left actually was the Juggernaut 2022 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($20), partially barrel fermented, partially fermented in stainless steel, resulting in a take citric, slanted and crisp. Juggernaut is a brand that Bogle, historically identified with everyday value wines with a broad “California” appellation, introduced in 2018 to recognize the winery’s surge in sales over the previous decade and to announce its shift into a line of more expensive varietal wines from highly regarded, more narrowly defined appellations, such as Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast.
The glass I should have pegged as the Element[al] was the third in the flight. It was the rich, swaggering, oak-sweetened and oak-complicated Element[al] 2022 California Chardonnay. As an indication that the Bogles look at Element[al] as more serious player than fleeting gimmick, two-thirds of the Chardonnay was barrel fermented in French and American oak, a third in stainless-steel tanks, ending up with a sophisticated interpretation both substantial and refreshing. Grapes for the wine were grown largely in the San Joaquin/Sacramento River Delta, the balance in Monterey County.
The others in the lineup were the fruity and plush Bogle 2022 California Chardonnay ($11), long the winery’s most popular wine, though passed in sales last year by its Cabernet Sauvignon, and the layered (peach, apple, mango) and robust Phantom 2021 Clarksburg Chardonnay ($18), aged just long enough in new French oak barrels to punch up its body and complexity without overshadowing its fruit.
In addition to the Chardonnay, the Element[al] lineup includes a fruity, lively and off-dry stainless-steel 2022 California Pinot Grigio with more than usual heft and layering thanks to its 11 percent Albarino; a lean, dry and jewel-toned 2022 California Pinot Noir whose refreshing flavor runs toward the cherry end of the variety’s spectrum; and a radiant, fruity and distinctly perfumed 2022 California Rosé, a seamless and light-hearted blend of Pinot Noir and Zinfandel. The Chardonnay and Pinot Noir carry 14.5 percent alcohol, the Rosé 12.5 percent, and the Pinot Grigio 11 percent.
Bogle remains family owned, with the sixth generation now running the business. Its homey tasting room looks out over vineyard and rustic buildings along Elk Sough just south of Clarksburg, itself just south of Sacramento. The winery’s isolation in a frequently overlooked wine region and its traditional focus on everyday varietal wines at modest prices have created an image of a stable company perking along quietly on the California wine scene, with little ambition and drama. “Our family has not been cutting edge,” says Jody Bogle.
What it has been is immensely successful. Bogle is the country’s 12th largest winery, selling 2.5 million cases a year, according to tracking by the trade magazine Wine Business Monthly.
Early in its evolution, Bogle increased production cautiously, concentrating on varietal wines like Chardonnay, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel and Chenin Blanc. It has become more daring and imaginative under the direction of the current generation – Jody Bogle and her brothers Warren and Ryan. New brands and new styles of wine now seem to be rolled out annually.
Element[al] is their biggest gamble yet. Nearly four years in development, Element[al] is their response to several challenges facing the wine trade:
For one, sales in Bogle’s principal price niche – around $10 – are slumping as wine enthusiasts show they are willing to spend more for more expressive wines (the suggested retail price for Element[al] wines is $17, putting it in a sales niche not quite as sluggish as the rest of the market).
Secondly, glass bottles, principally because of their weight and their transportation, are responsible for a huge chunk of carbon emissions attributed to the wine trade. Bogle officials pondered lighter glass bottles as a packaging alternative, but fretted about wine losing integrity in lightweight glass.
Third, the wine trade is frustrated and edgy about wine’s loss of allure among young potential customers, with the Bogles concluding that they needed something more modern and snazzy to draw in the twenty-somethings shunning wine.
With Element[al], they figure they have a winner that addresses all those concerns.
They have marshaled reams of data to show how their aluminum bottles, which contain the same 750 milliliters of wine as customary glass bottles, soften the wine trade’s impact on the environment. An aluminum bottle, for one, is 80 percent lighter than a traditional glass bottle, 90 grams for aluminum compared with 500 grams for glass. While a customary case of wine in glass bottles weighs around 33 pounds, a case of wine in aluminum bottles weighs about 22 pounds. With aluminum bottles instead of glass, about a third fewer trucks will be needed to ship the same amount of wine, say the Bogles.
What’s more, aluminum can be recycled basically forever without losing quality, with each iteration requiring only five percent of the energy used in the original manufacture, they note.
At the outset of their search for a more environmentally sensitive alternative to glass, and for packaging that would capture the attention of shoppers, the Bogles spurned the notion of putting wine in boxes, plastic bottles, single-serve cans, or containers that looked more like water bottles than the traditional wine bottle, the usual approaches taken by wineries in looking for options to glass. The Bogles were set on coming up with an aluminum bottle that looked more or less like the traditional glass wine bottle, tall and slender, with sloping sides. Trouble was, none existed.
One of the aluminum discs before it is transformed into a bottle.
In CCL Container of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, however, they found an experienced aluminum-can company willing to take on the challenge, provided Bogle help underwrite the research and development, which it did. (Bogle historically has been guarded in discussing money, and wouldn’t disclose their overall investment in aluminum, including the retrofitting of their bottling line to accommodate the new containers, other than to say it is in the “six figures.” So far, the aluminum cans have cost about double what they would have paid for the same number of glass bottles, but they are confident that as production ramps up their outlay will drop. “Right now, we’re the only ones,” said Englert.) The interior of the cans is sprayed with a customary food-grade coating to keep wine from coming in contact with the aluminum.
The resulting aluminum bottle has thin walls and no punt. It is topped with a screwcap, on which is printed the wine’s vintage. Because of the bottle’s opaque white coating imbibers can’t see how much wine remains as it is poured, and the vessel is so light they might question whether they actually are getting a full 750 milliliters of wine. (They are; I measured.)
The San Francisco design firm Stranger and Stranger came up with the bright swirling art of the bottles – a series of stylized baroque tapestries that look to have drawn inspiration from Victorian floral arrangements. The designs are slightly different for each varietal wine or style, though they all bear a strong family resemblance.
Customary label information is printed directly on the bottle. The front “label” notes “Same Volume/Smaller Footprint,” while the back veers from the usual information about the wine’s aesthetics, provenance and suitability with food to reinforce this environmental message, noting that aluminum is 80 percent lighter than glass, is shatter proof, and can be recycled infinitely. Each bottle is cast from a disc of solid aluminum three inches across and a quarter-inch thick.
Marketing tests with focus groups asked to react only to prototypes of the bottle, not its contents, encouraged the Bogles to proceed with development. “Women 21 to 39 years old really liked it,” says Jody Bogle. While the sustainability message of the packaging may have impressed audiences, what really sold them on the product was its “cool” factor, the sheer and novel elegance of the bottles, she adds. Reception among distributors and retailers has been better than the family expected, with 11,000 spots on store shelves secured soon after Element[al] began to be released.
The Bogles credit their longtime winemaker Eric Aafedt with extensive research and testing to come up with well-balanced wines that would over-deliver character, quality and value and that would compensate for the novelty of being in aluminum. They didn’t want to put “kitchen sink” wine in the bottles, but wines faithful to variety or style, carefully crafted, elegant and rich, says Jody Bogle.
While the light and casual aluminum bottles make them fitting for boat, beach, backpack and picnic basket, the Bogles were intent on coming up with a package that would sit naturally and proudly on store shelves alongside traditionally bottled wines. They didn’t want to be relegated to the tailgate-party section of the wine shop.
Still to be determined is how the costs in energy and resources to produce aluminum bottles compares with glass bottles, which the Bogles have started to study. Also unknown is how long the wines will maintain their initial character when put in aluminum, a concern that the Bogles share, though they note that most wines these days are consumed shortly after purchase rather than laid down for longterm aging. Furthermore, the varieties and style of wine they are putting in aluminum are customarily consumed in the short term rather than be socked away in a cellar. That said, Jody Bogle is confident the wines in aluminum will hold their freshness for at least 12 months. Only 50,000 cases, less than four percent of Bogle’s total annual output, is being bottled in aluminum initially.
The name Element[al], incidentally, is one of several candidates the Bogles floated before focus groups. It was chosen for the warm reception it received and for its embedding of the periodic-table symbol for aluminum.
Later this month, Bogle will launch on behalf of Element[al] its most ambitious advertising campaign ever, a series of videos and social-media messaging that breaks radically from the typical presentation of wine at party or dinner. Think fashion show, modern dance, performative art, and Oscar party, all presented on one spirited stage. The cost for this splashy premiere? “Seven figures,” say the Bogles.
“This is more than a moment, it’s a movement,” says Jody Bogle, confident that her family’s winery, long seen as subdued and conservative, indeed can be cutting edge.
To find where my book “The Signature Wines of Superior Wine: 50 Wines that Define the Sierra Foothills, the Delta, Yolo and Lodi” can be found, please visit my website, SignatureWines.us.