http://www.usatoday.com/money/indus...carb-wine_x.htm

Soon, you can raise a toast to low carbs
By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Wine and spirits company Brown-Forman (BFB) has a new vintage: low-carb.
Next week, at the chic Mandarin Oriental hotel here, the company will unveil One.6 Chardonnay and One.9 Merlot, brands named for the grams of carbs per five-ounce serving. The $9.99 wines, with about half the carbs of regular wines, are aimed not at wine connoisseurs but at the estimated 59 million Americans counting carbs.

The wines will be on store shelves by Memorial Day. Louisville-based B-F started taking orders last week and already has sold 125,000 cases to retailers, including Costco and Wal-Mart. A wine launch would be seen as a hit if it sold just 400,000 cases its first year, according to wine and spirits tracker Impact.

A big factor in the decision to launch the brands was the huge success of low-carb beers, led by Anheuser-Busch's Michelob Ultra in 2002.

"Ultra changed the paradigm but not just in the beer industry. It fueled the whole low-carb phenomenon," says Benj Steinman, editor of Beer Marketer's Insights.

The wines are part of a continuing stampede of food and beverage makers to cash in on what's already an estimated $39 billion market in low-carb products.

Just this week, for example, Heinz One Carb ketchup hit stores. It has one gram per serving vs. four for the traditional variety.

"It's one of those no-brainers. When there are other (brands) doing exceptionally well, wine should be participating as strongly," says Andrew Varga, global brand director at Brown-Forman Wines. B-F, perhaps best known for Jack Daniel's whiskey, owns several wine brands including Fetzer and Bolla, and markets others including Korbel and Michel Picard.

The low-carb idea was hatched before last fall's harvest. Winemaker Cara Morrison crafted the wines by choosing the right varietals and "fermenting them as dry as you can" to cut the sugar, Varga says.

The wines — a 2002 Merlot and 2003 Chardonnay — still have a typical alcohol content of 14.5% by volume. They'll be backed by a $5 million ad campaign built on the idea that the only thing drinkers are missing is carbs. The message: "Life is full of compromises. This isn't one of them."

The marketing plan is "brilliant," says food and beverage expert Phil Lempert. The "Supermarket Guru" believes the low-carb craze is already waning but that this brand could outlive it.

"They are not focusing on low-carb but instead on the number," he says. "This is simple and smart. It's very smart to name your product with a number so people instantly get it."