Articles: General Index 2006

Labels Gone Wild

"Dead celebrities," particularly labels starring Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, is another category marketers are exploring. Marilyn Merlot wine started out as a whim, but has evolved into one of the most collectible of wines; prices for multi-year collections approach those of fine Bordeaux and Burgundies. It is actually excellent Napa Valley wine, perhaps a shame since no one ever pulls its cork.

Labels Gone Wild

"Women consume 60 percent of wine," observes MacNeil, though, she notes, "Women have bought most of the wine for decades—just not expensive wine." Women are said to be more attracted to packages than to numeric scores, and that may have led to some labels, like the venerable flowered Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais, and the Perrier-Jouët Champagne bottles, as well as brands like Beringer’s White Lie and Mad Housewife, to be aimed specifically at women.

Labels Gone Wild

There’s JackaRoo, Four Emus, Crocodile Rock and The Little Penguin from Australia, and Fat Cat and Monkey Bay from New Zealand (a land that has no monkeys). American companies, too, have their share of creatures, including Papio with its own monkeys, Three Blind Moose, King Fish and HMS Rex Goliath, which was named after a 47-pound sideshow rooster.

Labels Gone Wild

Animals, mostly those perceived as noble, have long graced serious wine labels. Eagles and other birds, deer, foxes and members of the cat, dog and horse families are especially popular, including the quail of Covey Run, the crows of Croze and ravens of Ravenswood.

Labels Gone Wild

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.

Labels Gone Wild

Wine labels used to be simple.

They were designed to tell you what was in the bottle, though, admittedly, it sometimes seemed as though German and French labels were created to obscure that information and require buyers to become experts before they could even tell what they were buying.