Simon Says… Alphabetical

Top news for Si Webberley and Dave Cope this morning with the news that Google is to rebrand itself Alphabet. For the hipster twins are the brains and looks behind Alphabetical, the first red blend to be hip in SA.

alpha

As the website says “Alphabetical is a wine made from pretty damned good grapes grown in the harsh but beautiful winelands of the Western Cape, an area where the winemakers surf and the surfers make wine. Unlimited by set varietal or single origin snobbery, we decided to get the best fruit from two areas: one hot and dry that produces rich, ripe fruit; the other slightly cooler that produces dark, intense flavours. With quality this good, it was hard to choose what to leave out. So we decided to include all of it. The result is a wine made from, er, many varietals. How many? Well, let’s just say someone once joked ‘It’s almost the whole alphabet!’ A full-bodied wine with a rounded palate that bursts with delicious fruits and blah blah blah blah blah…”

Alphabetical is the antithesis of Swartland wines. There is no Eben-approved list of cultivars. No trumpeting of regionality – in fact the two grape sources are deliberately not mentioned – and no Toothy Tim as self-appointed sad-case PR spin “doctor.”

As “the pink ‘un” reports on the change to Alphabet “Mr Page said the new name for the holding company was also a pun on ‘alpha-bet’ — a reference to the huge investment Google was willing to stake on ideas that had the chance to outperform other stock market investments, known in market terminology as ‘alpha’”. Exactly the same bet Si and Dave placed on wine. So who will win? the hipster twins or Eben & Adi?

That the renaming was announced on Larry Page’s G is for Google blog must have sent a shiver down the spines of the PR industry. If they have them.