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 As wine lovers became more sophisticated, however, New World producers sought to distinguish their wines from cheap jug wine. They chose to name the wines after the grape varieties used to make them rather than adopting the geographic conventions of most of Europe.
Tradition led to conservative labels, with many producers using the same label for all products except for changes in the variety and vintage year. There were only a few brands, anyway, and buyers found it easy to choose their favorites from the relatively small shelf space they occupied in most stores.
Those were the days. Fast forward 40 years to today. There are reportedly more than 10,000 wine brands offered to U.S. wine lovers, in varieties from Albariño to Zinfandel. Enter any wine store and you have to choose from literally hundreds of bottles, your eyes assaulted by the visual cacophony of labels and packages, each seemingly more colorful than its neighbor. Producers are all trying to stand out from the competition and attract the buyer, especially the young, hip consumer.
 It’s no surprise that many of these wines come from California and Australia, which worship youth and cool. These labels strive to distinguish themselves from stuffy Old World and Old Boy wine traditions. "Millennials [those in their 20’s] are turned off by the labels with a picture of a chateau on them. They think that’s their grandfather’s wine," says Liz Thach, a professor of wine marketing at Sonoma State University who recently supervised a study of attitudes among younger wine drinkers.
Some labels are quite strange, none more than those from Randall Grahm’s Bonny Doon Winery. They include bad puns (My Favorite Marsanne, Originally Zin), strange drawings by artist Ralph Steadman (Cardinal Zin features a freakish church official; Domaine des Blagueurs, jokers), and marketing ploys from Bizarroworld: Big House Red’s label features a drawing of Soledad prison; Le Cigare Volant is named for the French version of a flying saucer, and there’s Le Pousseur (The Pusher) and il Fiasco. Thach notes the appeal to certain buyers: "One of the traits of Millennials is that they like the quirky, the offbeat. The preceding Generation X is more cynical."
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