What wine is 19 Crimes?
Launched in 2012, 19 Crimes is currently the UK’s favourite supermarket wine according to a recent survey conducted by Wine List, a wine subscription service. So why? How? When did this happen? And seeing as so many of you have asked me about this wine at some point or other, I am going to break down the 5 things you should know about 19 Crimes.
1. The 19 Crimes represents the felonies committed that resulted in punishment by transportation
Between 1787 and 1868 in England, a punishment just under death, was to send the criminals who had committed one of the 19 crimes (in reality there was actually more than 19 crimes that were punishable) to a Penal colony: Australia. The majority of those sent, were just petty criminals or political prisoners, and many died at sea. For those of you who love history you will discover much about the Fenian Brotherhood and stories of the daring Catalpa Rescue, which was basically an Irish Rescue story leading to the Irish Independence of 1922. The stories you will hear, are certainly not your ordinary bed time tales.
2. The labels come alive with Augmented Reality.
You can see this for yourself by downloading The Living Wine Labels app. You can also use it for several other brands, such as Wolf Bass and Lindeman’s. However none are as fun as this one. You get several stories with one label making then interactive, engaging and captivating. Here’s an example:
3. The corks are collectable
WARNING: If you have bought a bottle since April 2020 and November 2020 you may have just found a standard cork. How boring! If you are wondering why, it is because of covid-19 restrictions, which caused production issues and they were faced with either producing wines without the collectable corks, or not producing any wine: Its seems the people spoke, and the wine was still produced.
However, what should normally happen with each bottle is a game of Cork Roulette. Making the corks collectables may be the best part of their wines. There are some more understandable crime such as no. 9: Assault with an intent to rob. But what do you think about Crime no 3:
IMPERSONATING AN EGYPTIAN
4. There are now 14 wines and counting
Apart from the Sauvignon Blanc, Hard Chardonnay and Revolution rosé, the wines focus on Red Blends. All the grapes are sourced from South Eastern Australia. This is basically every major grape growing region in Australia except for Western Australia. These wines are about the story, rather than terroir. If you want to know more about terroir click here.
Watch out for the first Cali Red, a red blend from Lodi sourced fruit in California, USA with Snoop dog as the collaborator. I image this is just the start of many collaborations with other ‘innovators’ and ‘culture creators’ as they call it.
5. 19 Crimes is owned by Treasury Wine Estates, only one of the largest wine companies in the world
Treasury wine estates owns wineries such as Wolf Bass, Lindeman’s, Beringer, Stag’s leap, Wynns and my personal favourite PENFOLDS. Its only £500+ for a bottle of their flagship Penfolds Grange. So with their knowledge, experience and buying power they have done some careful research and plenty of consumer testing to know that whilst we all tend to talk dry, we drink sweet, so expect your bottle of 19 crimes to be unctuous and a fair bit sweeter than your average bottle of wine.
Talking of flavours heres a taster of the 2019 Red Wine:
Big bold flavours bursting out of the glass of black cherries, blackcurrants, chocolate and vanilla.
Full bodied and off dry, the sweetness is apparent but just makes it very easy sipper. Super smooth tannins, lushious, round and big on the fruit.
This is a wine to knock back, have fun with and without a doubt raise a glass to the mastermind of this very powerful marketing strategy.
“Only those who have stood within the bars and heard the din of devils and the appalling sounds of despair can imagine the horrors of the hold of a convict ship.” – John Boyle O’Reilly