I'd never heard of this wine until I saw it at a hugely discounted price at a local bargain grocery. It's  selling for $4.99 a bottle. Turn Me wines were initially released in 2007 in the U.S. through the importer Wein-Baur. The wine is currently available in two varieties, a traditional German dry Riesling, and a red blend. A sweet wine, "Turn Me Sweet" was introduced a year later. "Turn Me Red" is an Austrian Zweigelt grape blend created by Hans Nittnaus, a respected German winemaker. "Turn Me Riesling" is from Germany's Nahe region, and "Turn Me Sweet" is a sweet Spanish wine. All three retailed originally for around $9.99. The Riesling won the "Gold Medal" award in the under $10.00 category from the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI) in its 2007 World Value Wine Challenge. In the fall of 2007, Turn Me Red and Turn Me Riesling were included in the Emmy Awards "gift bags" distributed to attendees.

The main point of this wine though, is the label. I've embedded images of both bottles in this post. The labels feature nostalgic 1950s style pin-up girls; Wein-Baur is very specific that they are using "live models," as spokespersons for the wines. Regarding the red wine, Wein-Baur's promotional material asserts "Tantalizing the taste buds, from start to finish, this sultry red will invigorate your palate and provide you with the abundant pleasure you've been looking for in a wine. Open a bottle with your true love and remember when you blushed with the anticipation of loves first kiss on your lips." The wines are produced, bottled, marketed and sold exclusively in the U.S.

The fact that I'm now seeing this wine for $5.99 at an outlet store suggests that something, somewhere, went wrong. I think it's the branding. The label art is lovely; these are beautiful sexy women. I think the idea behind the branding was that guys would buy the wine because of the label in expectation and hope of "Turning" their lovers on. The problem is that in the U.S. most wine is bought by women—and they are more likely to view the lissome label lasses as competition than as an inducement to romance.

I note that the branding disaster continues in terms of their Web site; it's mostly not linkable to, and it uses music that you can turn off, but that turns on automatically. That's such a bad Web design practice that I'm surprised to see a commercial site, one that spent real money on custom art, engaging in it. There's a greater problem though; the site is a Flash site, complete with an annoying splash screen; the fact that it's in Flash means that almost none of it is indexed by search engins and that I can't link to individual pages. It also means that the site is completely unusable by those who do not speak English, or who are visually impaired. To handicap what is a decent table wine with these drawbacks is unfortunate, to say the least.