There is laughter inside every bottle of wine. Sometimes the mirth spills out after the first sip; other times it stays tucked in until the last glass. Unfortunately, there is no easy means of reliably pulling that feel-good sweetspot out in a way that will generate repeat sales.

But the idea of humor takes on a much more potent role outside the bottle, where consumers are more apt than ever to gauge a sense of wit when making--and remembering--wine purchases. Indeed, in our increasingly wit-driven society, humor has become a popular sales tool in all consumer markets. Wine is no different, although going for outright laughs can be even trickier--or perhaps easier--because wine's perceived snob appeal is a natural target for self-deprecating humor.

As a writer and speaker who brings jokes by the magnum to the table when communicating about wine, my job is much easier than the marketer's task. But my perspective as a frequent drinking companion to consumers of all tastes and sensibilities, I hope, can offer some insight into where and how humor in wine marketing works. Here is my take.

Types Of Wine-Marketing Humor

Humor doesn't come with rules, especially in terms of where and when it can be applied. Packaging, marketing materials, advertising, tasting room paraphernalia--all are ripe for ribbing. Most often, however, deliberate stabs at the funny bone hinge on wine names and labels, where I find the humor falling into three basic camps:

Blatant: Often vaulting over the dividing line of class and crass, wines like Il Bastardo, Old Fart, Stu Pedasso (say it fast), Big Ass, Mad Housewife and Cleavage Creek make little attempt at subtlety. On the other hand, overt is not always salacious. Screw Kappa Napa and many of Bonny Doon's labels are just as joke-forward. And Cat's Phee on a Gooseberry Bush (relabeled from the even more blatant "Cat's Pee") is one particular case where the initial scatological shock also carries organoleptic veracity.

Cute: These wines--including the ark's worth of critter wines that keep debarking on retail shelves--go for the funny bone less directly. Along with the little penguins, blind moose, funky llamas and the like, I include here playful brands like Jake's Fault, White Lie, Rock-Paper-Scissors, Big Tattoo Red, Red Truck, Twin Fin, etc. While they vary in how far they push the humor potential, cute wines aim to elicit smiles rather than guffaws. That's just fine for appealing to nonserious enthusiasts who might be as turned off by provocative names as by stodgy European labels.

Witty: While this is arguably the least easily corralled category, wit-tinged wines often present the overall appearance of serious wines only to reveal a mischievous twist at second glance. The best examples would be countless Australian wines and their cheeky proprietary names (The Ball Buster, Laughing Magpie, et al). A similar spirit radiates from the Zinfandel shelf these days, where shoppers find punishing plays on Zin (Inzinerator, Seven Deadly Zins, XYZin and so on) and references to Zin's pumped-up character and cultish appeal (The Kilt Lifter--now there's a real man's wine!). Cleverness is key here, and can range from casual second labels (WineSmith's Cheap Skate) to inspired parodies (Frog's Leap's Leapfrögmilch, Edmund St. John's "Blonk," Neil Ellis' "Sincerely" Sauvignon Blanc). One can count chunks of the Bonny Doon portfolio in this arena as well.

Different Strokes For Different Folks

It's worth noting here that there may be patterns to humor in wine marketing, but there are no formulas. Lighthearted labels differ dramatically in the degree to which the humor is immediately apparent; in the balance of graphics vs. words (Joel Gott's back labels ask simply "Gott wine?"); and in whether the humor is designed to represent an entire portfolio or simply a few bottles.

Cat's Phee on a Gooseberry Bush, for instance, is made by the New Zealand producer Coopers Creek; the flagship label, however, is entirely straightforward. Gundlach Bundschu is another example; its recently retired semi-silly Bearitage was designed for chuckles, while the main line is not.

On the other hand, the French-tweaking Goats do Roam proved so successful that the South African winery's lineup now includes Goats Do Roam in Villages, Goat Roti and even Bored Doe.

There is also wide variation in the degree to which humor is applied strictly to the wine label (front/back) or is aligned with the winery's overall message. In the case of Ravenswood, the longtime "No Wimpy Wines" motto is rampant at the tasting room and waved as proudly as a flag on the Ravenswood Web site, but the phrase is subdued on the winery's most serious bottlings.

At Bonny Doon, by contrast, it's hard to imagine a bottling that didn't wear its humor as visibly as a tattoo to the forehead. At Bonny Doon, no single motto is even attempted to apply to the entire BDV portfolio. The label-copy tone and label graphics vary almost bottle to bottle. Even so, the humor that gets onto the bottles serves as a mere iceberg-tip compared to the highbrow humor stockpiled on the Web site and in Randall Grahm's own writings on wine.

But Why Humor?

Rather than dissect lots of examples, it makes more sense at this point to step back and assess the goals of incorporating humor into wine marketing. In short, the primary goals are twofold: to get noticed and be remembered.

Sounds simple enough. And of course, the same goals could be attributed to packaging in general. But it's effectiveness that counts at the end of the day. And it's awfully tough to analyze to what extent humor--independent from other product and sales/promotion factors--is responsible for market strength.

But consider this example of "humor power," straight from France, mais oui. In its 2005 round-up of several dozen "hot" brands in the U.S. by Beverage Dynamics, only two French labels passed muster: Red Bicyclette and Fat Bastard. You don't need an MBA or a tastevin to tell that Fat Bastard revels in humor, which walks a tightrope between being riotously adolescent and elegantly subtle (how else to characterize a small, gold, embossed hippo?).

The other French dandy, Red Bicyclette, is E. & J. Gallo's Gallic line, sourced in the Languedoc and adorned with cartoonish illustrations. You might argue that good character, varietal labeling and modest pricing helped these brands as well, but you could probably say the same for dozens of French wines that people simply don't remember or seek out. Humor--treated very differently in each case--is what sets these two apart.
 
Furthermore, the success of Red Bicyclette, when coupled with Little Penguin and some other recently launched "cute" labels, suggests that consumers are actually treating cute and critter labels as a sort of comfort wine. With so many wines out there these days, and American knowledge of grapes and places still significantly limited, "cute" can in itself carry a message. That message, quite simply, is that the wine can't possibly be serious, and with a name/label like that, it's probably fun! At the very least, "cute" wines are perceived as nonthreatening and definitely not too serious. How many European labels can we say that about?

Humor All Around

Step out of your grape-stomping shoes for a moment and consider the big picture of 21st-century America. Humor abounds. On television, sitcoms are just part of the funscape; talk shows and reality TV thrive on snarky commentary and mockable outlandishness. In advertising, even blue-chip financial firms bank on humor to drive home a message ("What's in your cellar--er, wallet?").

And it's not just on TV. "Viral" jokes get e-mailed faster than you can say "spam." Billboards, magazine ads and Web sites are breeding grounds for irony, puns, cartoons and sight gags. In short, in a society where edgy is hip, humor has become a badge of honor in the marketplace of consumer goods.

That said, there is no reason why every winery should be churning out giggle-inducing wines. On the other hand, because humor is so integrated into everyday living (and marketing), and because humor remains a proven way to get attention, maybe your brand can get more market traction from tweaking your packaging.

One might argue that screwtops alone have made wine a more humor-ripe product. After all, in an industry that has made tremendous strides undoing one of its own emblems of connoisseurship, people can see the upside of wineries that are obviously able to chuckle at themselves.

It all comes back to image. If humor is something you consider to be part of your brand identity, then the time is now to drop some strategic banana peels along the marketing pipeline. For some, this may mean new packaging. For others, humor marketing may reach into new humor terroir, so to speak--perhaps it's text on corks, funny giveaways at big walkaround tastings, maybe a humor-tinged special event at the winery. Again, there's no roadmap for injecting humor into a winery's marketing plan, but there is certainly humor to be found in just about any direction.

(W. R. Tish, former editor of Wine Enthusiast, now develops private, corporate and trade tastings through his Web site wineforall.com. He also publishes an e-newsletter called WineFlash. Tish's approach to gastronomy: "I drink, therefore I am. I eat, therefore I am more." Contact him through edit@winesandvines.com.)