In an industry that’s currently buzzing with discussions of how to reboot wine and to engage younger consumers, one of the best ideas so far has come in the form of a collaboration between Domino’s and Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits’ Yellow Tail Brand.
The concept is simple: Buy a 1.5l bottle of the brand’s Perfect For Pizza red (for $17 ), twist off the cap and (using the Domino’s app and NFC tech) complete an order for a home delivery of your favourite Italian fast food.
The wine, a ‘fruit-forward red’ has apparently been tested with various Domino’s pizzas to ensure that it is as compatible with the pineapple as the pepperoni. How much the average Domino’s customer will focus on this pairing is open to question, but as Dan Kleinman, Chief Brand Officer at Deutsch said in a statement, the aim was to “enhance pizza nights without overcomplicating them.”
Comparisons with Pizza Hut's 2024 launch of a 'pizza wine' might seem reasonable, but that beverage was made from tomatoes, which would appear to separate it from the mainstream of the wine industry.
Not quite so simple
The Yellow Tail-Domino's effort is far more conventional, but it shares the 'limited availability' factor of the Pizza Wine initiative. This campaign - which launched on February 3rd - is only available to residents of Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington DC and Wyoming, and bottles can only be bought from ReserveBar.com and - 'selected markets in store.'
In an ideal world, shoppers across the US would be able to pick up a bottle of Domino’s-Yellow Tail collab wine in their local retailer, or order a bottle of the wine from with a click to accompany their Domino’s Pizza Margherita. But the three-tier-system and regulations controlling alcohol make that impossible, of course. So, the purchase of the wine and pizza has to be separate – and the wine effectively has to come first.
A national launch would require the production, labelling and distribution of hundreds of thousands of bottles of a new, untried product for a new, untried marketing concept. So, for the moment, in the US at least, apart from selling those ‘limited number’ of bottles bearing both brands’ logos, the two sides of the collab will have to make do with the wave of publicity they can generate through traditional and social media, and the potentially invaluable data they gather.
Yellow Tail will also have gained a Domino's tab on its website that recommends specific wines from the established range to go with specific pizzas. The "tropical and citrus flavors" of the Sauvignon Blanc apparently "accompany the sweetness of pineapple and the savory ham and bacon notes of the pizza". A combination that is "slightly controversial AND delicious."
Many in the wine industry will focus on the part of the collab they most like (or hate): the production, for example, of a ‘pizza-compatible’ wine or the frictionless NFC technology.
Others may note that half of Americans eat pizza every week and than over one in eight do so daily, many times as many as drink wine that frequently.
And of course, some will recognise the inestimable value for the Australian wine of being linked to one of the most instantly recognised and youth- and family-focused brands in the world.
