The announcement last week was brief:
Linda Rechnagel Anderson of Reno, owner of Design Lab LLC, won the "The Double Gold WOW Factor" award at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition last month.
The story behind the announcement, however, is a long one nearly two years long, in fact.
And it's a story that involves multiple businesses in Reno that set out to overcome daunting challenges to create an eye-catching product.
It starts with Reno restaurateur Sam Francovich he owns The Grill at Quail Corners who was looking for a way to widen the product offerings of his sideline company that's been bottling and retailing eggnog for more than a dozen years.
The answer: A pre-mixed Manhattan cocktail, a drink that's been a favorite at Francovich family gatherings for decades.
In the fierce competition for consumer loyalty not to mention shelf space in liquor retailers Francovich knew he couldn't count on the product selling itself.
"We wanted to make it a standout package," he says. "The liquor business is so competitive."
Enter Anderson, who's been working with The Grill and Francovich Distillers for years, designing everything from eggnog labels to restaurant menus.
Francovich sketched out what he wanted a bottle, nearly a foot and a half tall, a representation in glass of a Manhattan skyscraper.
Anderson began with the mathematical nitty-gritty. What dimensions did the bottle need to be to contain one liter of the mixed cocktail? What dimensions for an easy-pour 750-milliliter bottle?
Then things got interesting.
The design Francovich had in mind featured three setbacks in the bottle something like those on the upper floors of the Empire State Building and sharply squared corners.
Take that bottle of Jack Daniels out of the bottom drawer of your desk and look at it. There's a reason the corners are beveled. Square corners are hard to make.
So hard, in fact, that Francovich and Anderson couldn't find any American bottlemaker who would take on the project. So hard, in fact, that Bruni Glass, the Italian company that makes the bottle, needs to toss one of every three newly made bottles back into the recycling bin because of production flaws.
But Francovich wasn't satisfied with an almost-impossible-to-manufacture bottle. He wanted a special kind of silk-screen label on the bottle, the sort of air-brushed look on the bottles of some vodkas imported from Poland.
The problem: Most everyone who knew how to label bottles that way works in Poland.
Clay Wilson, the owner of CW Graphics in Reno, took a look at the design, thought about it for the better part of six months, and figured out how to do it with pad printing an advance on traditional screen printing.
To make sure the ink dries on the glass without running, CW Graphics invested in a UV curing system that's a smaller version of technology used by automotive manufacturers.
For all the technology, Wilson still need to jerry-rig a hair dryer to a microphone boom stand to properly dry the ink.
Says Francovich, "He's been a great asset to us."
The bottle's plastic cap, complete with a little red button on top to warn away low-flying aircraft, was developed and manufactured by Triad Plastic Technologies in Reno.
At one point, the cap even included a bit of electronics that illuminated a light whenever a bartender's hand came near. But that, Francovich finally decided, was simply too much.
So was all the work, all the hassle worth it?
Absolutely, says Francovich. Within three weeks of launching Manhattan, distributor Southern Wine & Spirits had the mix placed in Scolari's, Ben's Fine Wine & Spirits and Total Wines & More shelves in northern Nevada.
Bartenders at casinos such as the Silver Legacy, John Ascuaga's Nugget and Harrah's were pouring the 70-proof drink.
And Francovich already was thinking about the Chinese market.
The business secret to the bottle? It's so tall that it only fits in high-profile locations at retailers, places like end caps, back-of-store displays, top shelves right in front of consumers' eyes.
