Tesco Taps Fans to Create Social Wine

Forget simply red or white. South African wine producer Stellenbosch Vineyards, wine distributor Enotria World Wines, and U.K. supermarket chain Tesco teamed up with social media agency We Are Social to launch a social wine for a mainstream audience last summer. And, after hitting Tesco shelves in the fall, the resulting wine, Enaleni’s Dream, has sold about 80,000 bottles to date, the agency says.

Calling it “a wine that was created for the people, by the people on social media,” We Are Social says it wanted social media users to influence each part of the wine production process.

As a result, the agency launched the campaign with a blogger event at which a group of so-called influencers selected the grape blend for the wine.

We Are Social also created the Social Wine hub, an app on Tesco’s Facebook page, where it has 1.4 million likes. Fans could use the app to suggest names for the wine, upload bottle designs, and vote on favorites.

According to We Are Social, the campaign resulted in 1,668 entries, more than 800 votes, and almost 15,000 unique page views in three weeks.

Enaleni is a wine farm located outside Stellenbosch Vineyards in South Africa.

“Enotria wanted to raise awareness of the South African wine producing community, Enaleni, and help them create a new sustainable business which would help ensure the future of their community,” a We Are Social rep says. “They asked Tesco and We Are Social to help them create the world’s first socially sourced wine to do this.”

Produced by Stellenbosch, Enaleni’s Dream includes both a shiraz, which, per Tesco, has “light berry fruits and purple plums…matched perfectly against a delicate spice” and a chardonnay with “a strong citrus flavor with both lemon and crisp green apple notes.”

According to the We Are Social rep, Enotria had identified that many Tesco customers were wine novices who were sometimes intimidated by supermarket wine aisles.

“Enotria saw this as an opportunity to create the first social wine in order to engage these customers and help build their understanding of how wine is produced,” the rep says.

Likening it to American Idol, digital strategy advisor Augustine Fou says letting consumers vote is usually a good thing.

“Starbucks also did a site years ago to ask consumers for ideas and for them to rank order the ideas, too,” Fou says. “I think Ben & Jerry’s let consumers choose a limited-edition flavor one summer [as well].”

A video from Tesco explains more about the history of the Enaleni farm, as well as its owners and workers.