Tissue Wrap Preference and a Question

Don’t think this requires a poll, but I for one like to keep the tissue wrap on bottles…looks nice and provides a little extra protection on the racks.

What I really appreciate is when wineries put a sticker or some other defining label on the tissue so that you can identify the bottle without having to unwrap. Pott does this well…perhaps others.

Where I have a question is in regards to Scarecrow. Does anyone know what color tissue they wrap in? I am trying to find a bottle of 2005 that I show in Cellartracker and am certain I still have, but it is not in the rack where it is supposed to be. If I knew the color tissue to look for it would be a big help…thank you in advance.

Cheers,
Adam

I would e-mail them and ask.

info@scarecrowwine.com

Have not purchased in some time but mine were a bit of a natural kraft paper color if that makes sense.

“What color is the tissue on 2005 Scarecrow” is an all time great WB post. I don’t mean that as an insult or criticism, but it’s just awesome how far we can get down into the minutea of our hobby. Rock on.

I was going to say…

It’s thin, undyed tissue paper. As Charles said, sort of natural looking.

Oh, we can delve deeper:

How about what percentage of it is made from post-consumer material? And should wineries in general be more thoughtful about the sustainability of their packaging?

I like 20-25 gram tissue. 30-40 gram thickness is too hard to remove and 17 gram is too thin and tears too easily.

Also, I like my wine tissue wrap spun to the right.

Except for Aussie, Kiwi, Chilean and Argentine wines, which of course should spin left.

Really? Go flush your toilet and report back on that one.

In a retail shop there’s the issue of having to sell that one bottle you have to unwrap so people can see it, but then everyone wants wrapped bottles. I understand completely, as a collector, because I leave them on since labels tend to get chewed up in many wine fridges.

makes it hard to polish and dust the bottles daily. Wrapping and unwrapping is such a chore.

I carefully remove the tissue, iron it flat, and store it in vintage blueprint cabinets. Organized first by region, then alphabetically by producer, and finally by vintage.

(In reality, I remove it immediately because I like to barcode label my bottles, and it’s not worth the hassle to try to replace the tissue afterward.)

That reminds me, what ever happened to Mark Boldizar?

NoK is also neutral, undyed tissue, albeit slightly lighter than Scarecrow, which is slightly lighter than Saxum Bonerock. I just use my Pantone meter to figure out which is which - way more utility than a Coravin.

When I worked retail my rationalization was that case customers deserved (I don’t like the connotation of this word but I can’t think of anything better right now) the tissue wrap. Single bottles destined for the rack were always unwrapped (mainly to access UPC or use an in-house sticker).

One upside to tissue is that you can tell whether or not a bottle has leaked. A producer once told me that is why all of their wines are wrapped in tissue.

As for the barcode issue- you can always adhere a barcode to the outside of the tissue paper.

It attracts moisture. I remove it.

If the (usually brittle) tissue gets tattered and looks bad or falls off you’re just doing double work, then. I also worked in a rather busy 35k square foot shop with people in my department that I would say were less competent than me and I took pride in correct inventory.

I don’t mind tissue but implore wineries to add a sticker with name and vintage. Really tough to deal with without a sticker and very time consuming to do it by hand when they arrive - much easier for wineries to put stickers on when they are wrapping them. However, very few actually do it.