Aldi’s Reprobates sparkling wine got the criminal treatment earlier this month, following a ruling that it breached industry code by creating a “direct and dominant association with illegal behaviour”.
The independent complaints panel of the Portman Group, the alcohol industry marketing self-regulator, found the packaging of the Aldi own-label wine – which featured a mugshot and prison-style tally lines – suggested a crime serious enough to require imprisonment.
The panel was not persuaded by Aldi’s arguments. Its defence “primarily focused on other producer marketing in the category”, claiming “features of the packaging were consistent with similar brands”, which it presumed the Portman Group approved of.
It’s not hard to imagine which brands Aldi may have been referring to.
The discounter is well-known for ‘benchmarking’ its own-label packaging against that of popular brands, to signpost them to shoppers as cheaper alternatives. Its Reprobates wine branding is reminiscent enough of 19 Crimes – with the latter’s even more literal reference to criminal activity – to have prompted taste comparisons from wine influencers.
What was wrong with Reprobates?
Reprobates coming under fire was largely a case of old-fashioned bad luck. The complaint arose because Aldi’s wine happened to be one of the 500 alcohol products selected for the Portman Group’s first proactive market audit, launched in January this year.
The independent auditor, Zenith Global, complained that the name “seems to glamorise illegal behaviour”, while a mugshot-style image on the label and score marks resembling tally lines on the bottle neck were “clearly associated with counting days in prison”.
It also claimed the male depicted didn’t look over 25, as required by the code of practice.
The panel disagreed with Zenith on the latter point. It noted the man’s age “appeared to be somewhat indeterminate” but accepted Aldi’s argument that his 1920s attire placed him in a “bygone era” not aspirational to under-18s, in line with the “spirit” of the code. Aldi also argued the character shown in its AI-generated image was “clearly adult”.
Regarding the name, Aldi referenced a 2024 decision in which the Portman Group deemed it acceptable for Wolfie’s Whisky to use the term ‘rascal’ as a “light-hearted term to refer to cheekiness, rather than being synonymous with illegal behaviour”. The panel agreed that ‘reprobate’ did not inherently suggest criminal or illegal behaviour.
But while the name in isolation was acceptable, its use in alongside the image and the tally marks was not. The image resembled a classic “mug shot” pose, and the tally marks suggested “counting down the time until release,” according to the panel. Together with the name, these elements created a “direct and dominant association with illegal behaviour”.
The code advises against glamorising contemporary illegal behaviour, and the panel accepted Aldi’s imagery had no contemporary relevance. But it also said the guidance allowed room for movement depending on the severity of the crime depicted. In Aldi’s case, “regardless of the specific period conveyed, the impression was still one that the character had been convicted of a crime that was serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence”.
Why didn’t Aldi’s defence stand up?
While Aldi pointed out that similar products had been on the market for some time, the panel said it “could only consider the merits of the case subject to complaint”. It also “highlighted that it had not made a formal decision regarding other products” which had been raised in response.
19 Crimes, owned by Treasury Wine Estates, one of the Portman Group’s 21 funding members, is among the products for which a formal decision has not yet been made. The brand has not yet appeared before the panel as part of the audit process, and indeed may not even feature among the 500 products in the audit, which were selected to be representative of the alcohol market based on off-trade volume share data for 2024.
The Portman Group says it has not and will not see the full list, as not all the products prompted Zenith to register its concerns.
Some other products are yet to come before the panel, before a report due out this autumn which will name all products seen by the panel.
“We fully expect that our members will have had products included in the sampling,” says a Portman Group spokesperson.
“However, we also expect our members to uphold the highest standards in terms of compliance, so it is no surprise that they weren’t subject to many complaints during the process of the audit.
“Beavertown’s Lupuloid, which is a subsidiary of one of our members, Heineken, was subject to a complaint. It went before the Independent Complaints Panel [in July], but the complaint was not upheld.”
The importance of telling a story
If 19 Crimes were to be the subject of a complaint, it might point to the clear historical story attached to its name, in the 19 crimes that were once ‘punishable by transportation’ to Australia.
“Between 1788 and 1868, 165,000 convicts made the long voyage by sea to Australia,” the brand says on its website. “Times were tough for criminals, but these individuals were tougher. They survived the boat ride and the exile. Now their stories survive into the 21st century with 19 Crimes.” Each bottle features one of the 19 crimes printed on its cork.
While non-contemporary cues didn’t get Aldi off the hook, a lack of storytelling didn’t help it, either. The panel noted an “absence of any other storytelling cues on pack” to dilute the “dominant” association with illegal behaviour created by Reprobates Sparkling.
Wolfie’s Whisky was also able to direct the panel to its brand story. Co-owned by Rod Stewart, it aimed to create an association with rock music, and the panel noted that the wolf was presented in a “friendly albeit cheeky way, which contributed to the impression that ‘rascal’ was intended to refer to mischievous characteristics”.
There was nothing else on the packaging to create an association with “bravado or with violent, aggressive, dangerous, anti-social or illegal behaviour”, so the panel did not uphold the complaint.
Treasury Wine Estates declined to comment.
For Aldi, the lesson may be that benchmarking packaging against popular brands and catching the consumer’s eye isn’t always enough. Without a clear brand story or mitigating context, Reprobates fell foul of the code and is no longer on sale.
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