Wax manufacturer recommends.

So, I’ve been striking out pretty badly with one of the biggest bottle wax producers in America. They’ve now done 3 samples trying to match a design for a Pantone color and been so far off the mark every time, I’ve now completely lost faith in them. I understand that it has to be done manually and by eye, but it seems that their blending lab is quite literally employing color blind people… [wow.gif]

Are there any producers that use wax tops here and can give me a recommendation for a good wax supplier that can do custom colors?

I don’t have a wax supplier for you, but I can tell you that color matching does not have to be done by eye. There are easy ways to do it, they probably just don’t have the equipment. These guys are the king of color management.

I think foil is the way to go. Just one consumers vote. :slight_smile:

No wax please. Just put a cork in as several producers I buy.

Agree…dear god… lose the wax. it’s not cool, it’s not pretty… it’s just a royal pain in ass for the customer.

Insert cork screw in center of wax and pull. If you do anymore, you are doing too much.

  1. What about blind tasting?
  2. I tried that and Half of the time it doesn’t work. :frowning:
  3. It’s bottom line - still unnecessary. Wax has 0 functionality.

Wax is lame and useless. There’s quite a range, so some is a pain for consumers and some isn’t bad. Capsules are lame, too. If you want to walk the walk on the green and natural side of things, just go bare. Quite a few respected wineries do.

I use Etched Images in Napa for my magnums. I have been very happy with them.

You have some of the nicest bottles too Merrill.

Thank you! I work hard at it…my favorite that does not have a waxed cap - just comes in 750ml - is the 2015 Lady Sapphire. I am talking bottle design. I tried a bottle recently and we all agreed it was not ready for consumption. This was the single barrel wine I made.

Thread drift…Merrill I have a magnum of the ‘13 SS with a family reunion coming up this Fall. Drink or hold?

I have not tried it for quite awhile. I’ll pull one and let you know.

Such resistance to wax. Never had much problem with them myself.

Me neither.

Adam - Who have you tried? Surprisingly, there are not many wax producers worldwide but there are lots of resellers. I ordered waxes from CalWax & Blended Waxes for comparison on dipping and ease of pulling the cork. Both of them will do custom work. Not knowing how colors are made for waxes I could imagine that hitting on a pantone color might be difficult. We originally thought of matching label color to wax color but have simplified it to a few colors for the wines we make. I think the third wax maker in North America is Kings Wax in Canada. Funny thing is that when I started looking at waxes I came across so many sites with “Brazilian Waxing”…didn’t take me long to figure out that was not bottle appropriate.

Hi Gary.

BW is the one that has not been able to match the color at all after 3 months of back and forth. Now I’m talking to Kings Wax in Vancouver and he got the color right on his first try, judging from photos. But as he’s in Canada, I initially asked here in case there was some US supplier I had missed. He’s now sending me some samples and I’ll take it from there and see how it behaves on the bottle.

Part of me doesn’t want the insane hassle of dipping thousands of bottles, but I can’t help but think it elevates the product. The way Claus Preisinger does it on his bottles is really tasteful - a short dip. Hard to get that vibe with foil.
blaufrankisch-claus-preisinger-2015_15032_zoom.jpg

Adam - Just to complete the trials and pricing I would contact CalWax as they are close to you in La Mirada. They do custom work as well. The Blended Waxes folks have more “pre-made” colors than the others but it sounds like custom color matching is not their strength.

Search around on the forum. There is a lot of serious dislike. While I’m sure you’d choose a wax that’s not a PIA for customers, a lot of us have had to deal with really difficult wax. Enough that’s it’s a strong negative in making a buying decision. For novices who haven’t dealt with wax, it’s intimidating. That’s a couple segments of potential customers you’d be deterring sales with. After that, comes the opening decision. I see this all the time, when there are multiple bottles to choose from, waxed bottles don’t get opened, unless it’s a really compelling producer. (And, again, some of them use awful wax, which just reinforces negative sentiments.)

A couple wineries I work with use wax on magnums, but that’s like up to 24 bottles. I don’t know any winemakers who like the idea of dealing with wax beyond that. Some of them have done it, then abandoned the practice.

Again, don’t think of capsules as the alternative. As someone who has bottled for dozens (50?) of labels, they are a constant problem. They are so delicate. Despite the massive amount of packaging to protect them, a warehouse worker can toss a box around fairly normally, compacting them together very slightly, which is enough that they stick together just enough that they won’t work in a dispenser and have to be put on manually. A slight change, with the same specs, for the capsules or bottles, can mean they don’t go on well or at all. Imagine having to watch for and pull a certain percent from the line, cut off the capsule and put those back on the line. Oh, that safe amount of extra you felt safe with is gone, and you have several cases with no capsules, despite all those you let through with a somewhat acceptable level of creasing. The mobile line I worked with most recently (and a few times before) didn’t even bother getting a dispenser. That meant Lucy and Ethel spent 8 hours maxed out on a fast line manually putting on capsules.

My recommendation is a nicely branded cork as part of the packaging design. It can look very clean, elegant, natural. Check producers like Halcon, Big Basin, Ghostwriter, Harrington, Broc, Edmunds St. John, Wind Gap, Cellars 33 and many more. (Some may choose to capsule a higher tier of wines.)

Will see what happens. My label designer has been begging me not to do wax as well, so maybe I’ll just do it for the limited edition releases and the magnums. I’m still up in the air about it, but have asked Lafitte for a quote on the plastic foils now…