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Wynvale – A Fairy Story

Once upon a time Wynvale Wines decided to do a 200 ml (sorry, 6-2/3 fluid ounces)
bottle in the shape of an upright barrel. The bottle was plain, they put a paper label
on it and a flush cork. Unfortunately when the label fell off, and yes, they did fall off,
you were left with a bottle of unknown origin and contents. Yes, I know that 200ml is
oversize for miniatures but they do appear in many collections in this part of the
world, so bear with me.

For their next effort the glass bottle’s
bottom was embossed with Wynvale
during manufacture and they printed
the company name on the outside of
the bottle in white ink and added a cork with an
upstanding white top. Whether they put on a paper
label or a plastic printed seal around the cork
unfortunately, same result. With age and time, no
label and again, unknown contents but if you’re
smart enough to invert the bottle you will at least
know the bottle’s origin.

Somebody even
thought about saving money on bottle making by printing a 6
pence bottle refund on the top of the cork. I’m afraid that this too
seems doomed to failure because once the cork is removed the
refund message is gone.

Finally they put a metal screw cap on the bottle
and printed the contents on the metal cap, even
using different colours for different wines.
Problem solved.

At about this time they also, finally, decided to do
a 50ml bottle looking the same as the bigger one.
Learning from past mistakes, this bottle is clearly
marked Wynvale around the base, readily
identifying it for all time, but unfortunately the
paper label still fell off – frequently! (The moral of
this story is don’t buy Australian glue – editor)

As all good fairy stories end with a happy ending,
this one does too. I get to drink them all to check
on their contents! (Good luck with that Neil. This was not good
wine when bottled and will be terrible now – editor)

Neil Atkinson

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