Sutter Home Takes TV Taste Test

SAN FRANCISCO – Sutter Home Winery is launching its first test-market TV campaign to see if television advertising can ferment its market share.
With the exception of the dominant E. & J. Gallo Winery and its multi -million-dollar ad budget, the restrictive ad budgets of most vintners have limited their marketing efforts and made TV campaigns rare. Almaden and Blossom Hill, for example, have used TV at points in the past.
But Sutter Home, the nation’s second-largest premium wine brand with $243 million in 1992 sales, said it made the decision to try television in the hopes of combining and intensifying the benefits it found separately in print and radio.