Shipping out in style

Wines & Vines, Sept, 2004 by Jane Firstenfeld

"A shoulder-high partition will still offer glass-to-glass protection up to the shoulder of the bottle, but eliminates the wasted partition space from the neck, where there is no glass-to-glass contact," Thiele explains.

Contact: Seaside Paper Products, Ltd., 9999 River Way, Delta, B.C., Canada V4G 1M8. Phone: (604) 930-2700, e-mail, john@seasidepaper.net, Web site: seasidepaper.com.

ThermoSafe Brands is an Arlington Heights, Ill. division of SCA Packaging North America and, according to marketing communications coordinator LeighAnn Wiegel, "The leading provider of temperature assurance solutions for a wide array of packaging needs," serving customers nationwide for more than 20 years.

ThermoSafe wine shippers are available in a variety of sizes and shapes, including lay down or top-loading styles for one to 12 standard 750ml bottles; top-loading, universal wine shippers to hold "almost every shape or size;" top-loading, one or 12 bottle sparkling wine shippers and magnum shippers for 1.5L bottles.

Wiegel says ThermoSafe's newest wine shipping product, the universal wine shippers, "fit all typical 750ml bottles and oversized bottles, such as sparkling wine. Molded foam parts fit snugly around wine bottles and support vulnerable bottle necks. Their strong, lightweight and precise designs assure that shipping costs are minimalized while bottles arrive safely."

She notes, too, that, "The shipping industry is expanding to service more people globally. In turn, this is demanding that more packaging meet air freight requirements and qualify for overseas shipping."

Contact: ThermoSafe Brands, 3930 Ventura Dr., Ste. 450, Arlington Heights, IL 60004. Phone: (800) 323-7442, e-mail: info@thermosafe.com; Web site: thermosafe.com.

With the wealth of packing options now at hand, if your wine shipment fails to arrive intact, somebody might just be dropping the ball, if not the case.

RELATED ARTICLE: California Port Producers Seek To Fortify Reputation

Small California producers of port and similar fine wines have founded the Sweet and Fortified Wine Association in an effort to promote a positive image and create a larger market for their products. Though California wineries may label their products "port" for domestic sales, Portuguese producers have kept the European market out-of-bounds to U.S. port for the last 21 years.

As with sparkling wine, nomenclature is the trade issue. "What word do you use to call this wine? Port is the only word that describes it," Peter Prager, of St. Helena's Prager Port Producers said in the St. Helena Star. The producers argue that the term "fortified wine" bears the stigma of cheap beverages consumed from brown paper bags. Some contend that the name "port" represents a style, not a region. Terry Dewane, who owns Belo in Napa, explained that one of the association's long-term goals will be to find a name other than port, or to raise the status of the term "fortified wine."

(We thank the sources above for responding to our e-mail survey. For more shipping/packaging resources, please refer to your Wines & Vines Annual Directory/Buyer's Guide.)