In an article covering Wines & Vines Magazine’s Packaging Conference this past Aug. 17, Paul Franson wrote, “one of the most popular sessions…featured three wine retailers discussing what wine packaging worked for them – and what didn’t.”

The three panelists: Gary Fisch, owner of Gary’s Wine and Marketplace in New Jersey, Debbie Zachareas, the co-owner and partner of Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant in San Francisco and OxbowMann stressed that producers ought to seek feedback regarding wine packaging from the frontline: retailers.

I’m not a retailer, but one packaging “innovation” that drives me nuts is the heat-shrink capsule on wine bottles: it is wasteful, the little tab ostensibly designed to allow us to zip off its top hardly ever works properly and some of the capsules refuse to loosen their grip on the glass. Alas, that subject did not come up, and so I digressed.