Advertisers Love Us

Shawn and I have often commented on the fact that advertisers must love us. We are exactly the people they're looking for. We are absolutely swayed by and will purchase products based on creative packaging, funny (yet not too annoying) commercials and ads, and unique names. The best examples of this can usually be found in our wine rack.

This is our wine rack, as it stands today. For us, this is pretty empty. This lovely Crate and Barrel piece holds up to 25 bottles of wine, and there are currently 10 empty slots. We really need to do a little shopping.

But one thing you should understand is that neither Shawn nor I really know much about wine. We just know that we enjoy sharing a bottle from time to time. We think it's tasty. So how do we choose which bottles to buy? Simple. We normally base our choice on two criteria: price and the label.

When it comes to price, we try to spend less than $10 a bottle. If any of you reading this are true oenophiles (aka - lover of wine), please don't hold this against us. It's just how we do things. And I think lots of people might be surprised at the number of good wines are this affordable! Granted, this has also brought us the occasional bottle of really bad wine, but it's a risk we're willing to take.

When it comes to labels, this is where advertising comes in. I tend to be drawn to the bottles with interesting designs on the labels. Shawn tends to be drawn to the bottles with interesting and/or funny names. Can you tell which of us chose the bottles pictured here?

I'm pretty sure these were all chosen by Shawn. The bottle of Mad Fish is the very first bottle of wine that Shawn and I ever shared. He picked it up on his way over to my apartment when I was making dinner for him...I think for the first time. He decided that any wine with a name that included an adjective and an animal was probably going to be good. Fortunately, he was right! Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find this wine sold in any store in well over a year. We just recently enjoyed these other two bottles. Naked is a Reisling from a local Washington winery, and...well, Shawn figured that naked is good. :) And I normally prefer red wines, but this one was good. Pretty sweet. And finally, we have (Oops). It made Shawn laugh the first time he saw it, so we've bought it twice now. It's a Chilean wine (which we tend to really like), and according to the label, for decades people thought they were using Merlot grapes, only to find out in 1994 that the grapes were actually Carmenere grapes that had been allowed to grow wild. Oops.

In each of these cases, Shawn's tendency to pick wine based solely on name and price worked out well for us. Too bad I can't say the same for the bottle of Triple Dog Dare we once picked up on sale for $2.99.