Alsace wines stripped back to just ’Gewurz’

ewurztraminer is pretty difficult to say and spell, right? Well then, just say ‘Gewurz’! This is the message of the end-of-year marketing campaign put together by the Alsace wine marketing board CIVA which features on two posters. With their minimalist design, the posters take an “impish tone. The campaign aims to reintroduce a simpler, less fussy conversation with an audience that needs to reconnect to the world of wine with no inhibitions”, explains Philippe Bouvet, the marketing board’s head of marketing. The thrust aims to reach out to a new audience interested in wines with oily, rounded characters whose powerful aromas lend fullness to the palate. Its goal is also to energise sales of a grape variety whose yields have been dropped from 55 to 50 hectolitres per hectare in 2024 and which is suffering from high inventories, estimated at 25 months’ worth of sales at the end of August 2024.

The ‘Gewurz’ campaign is being rolled out from mid-October to mid-December 2024. It will feature 2m2 or 8m2 glass-covered billboards along the busiest roads in some forty cities with a population of over 100,000 like Aix-en-Provence, Besançon, Le Mans, La Rochelle, Troyes, Paris, Strasbourg and Colmar. Readers will also find the campaign in fifteen or so magazines and regional dailies, which will be complemented by social media presence starting with Facebook and Instagram.

Concurrently with this, the ‘Discover our Alsace Vineyards’ campaign rolled out at the start of the year – which has already reached 8 million viewers – will return to cinema screens in order to “put Alsace firmly front of mind”. The entire marketing thrust will set Alsace wines back over €500,000.