Judge a Wine By Its Label: 20 Bottles That Looks As Good As They Taste

We bring you the story behind the design of some of the coolest vino bottles in America.

Jonathan Cristaldi

The wine marketing wars have reached fever pitch these days, making it more difficult than ever to figure out what’s what when you’re perusing the shelves at your local wine merchant. Clever puns, brash typography, cute dogs, and graffiti-strewn labels all clammer for your attention, making the imagery of old French chateaux look as fusty and old-fashioned as a leatherbound book.

But while it’s certainly fun to show up to a party with a 2006 vintage Bitch under your arm, you don’t want to end up drinking some mouth-puckering plonk that’s all style and no substance.

To help you achieve the perfect vino double-whammy, we’ve selected 20 eye-catching domestic labels that are worthy not only for their aesthetic allure, but also because they happen to be superb wines. Ogle the artwork, then read the stories behind each design.

Written by Jonathan Cristaldi (@NobleRotNYC)

The wine marketing wars have reached fever pitch these days, making it more difficult than ever to figure out what’s what when you’re perusing the shelves at your local wine merchant. Clever puns, brash typography, cute dogs, and graffiti-strewn labels all clammer for your attention, making the imagery of old French chateaux look as fusty and old-fashioned as a leatherbound book. But while it’s certainly fun to show up to a party with a 2006 vintage Bitch under your arm, you don’t want to end up drinking some mouth-puckering plonk that’s all style and no substance. To help you achieve the perfect vino double-whammy, we’ve selected 20 eye-catching domestic labels that are worthy not only for their aesthetic allure, but also because they happen to be superb wines. Ogle the artwork, then read the stories behind each design. Written by Jonathan Cristaldi (@NobleRotNYC)
1. Mourvedre, Dirty & Rowdy

Artist: Brother Rowdy Winemaker: Hardy Wallace dirtyandrowdy.com The Dirty (Hardy and Kate) and Rowdy (Matt and Amy) in question are the families that bear the name of this wine. The label was designed by Matt’s brother and depicts what winemaking is truly about: manual labor, heat-scorching hallucinations, rattlesnakes, and mountain lions. Throughout the 2011 growing season, Hardy and Kate worked ten hour days in 100°F heat, always on the lookout for rattlers, cougars, or any other critter. Major weed-whacking marathons were par for the course , and after hours in the vineyard heat, Hardy says he'd “just disintegrate in this wash and hum of white noise and you would hallucinate of all sorts of weird stuff like jungle cats leaping over grapevines being fended off by your trusty weed-whacker.” From weed-whacking paranoia, a great label is born.
2. Covenant, Covenant

Artist: Susann and Joann Ortega Winemaker: Jeff Morgan covenantwines.com Kosher wine never looked so good. The vibrant colors of Covenant’s label alone scream, “Thou shalt taste of this wine and be merry.” The backdrop was inspired by a Chagall stained-glass window from a church in Austria. Designer Susann Ortega and her sister Joann actually read through the book of Exodus with winemaker Jeff Morgan looking for “Covenant,” and settled on a figure depicting a boy blowing the Shofar, which was used to announce the arrival of Moses coming down Mount Sinai with the Covenant tablets (a.k.a., the Ten Commandments). The label, too, evokes a simple call-to-action: Drink me!
3. RED C, Covenant

Artist and winemaker: Jeff Morgan covenantwines.com Lightening struck twice with Morgan’s second label, which pops as much the first rendition of the alluring “C.” The original plan for this wine was to show an Egyptian surfing on a red wave, but after the original Covenant label ran his budget into the ground, he decided to bootstrap it: First, he cut out the “C” from his expensive Chagallian label, blew it up, and colored it red. In the end, necessity and simplicity produced the best pun ever for a Kosher wine (think about it).
4. Landsman, Covenant

Artists: Jeff and Jodie Morgan Winemaker: Jeff Morgan covenantwines.com Ok, ok—we’re not playing favorites, but a label inspired by New York City’s landmark Second Avenue Deli is aces in our book. Jeff and wife Jodie designed this label. The twelve stars are a direct reference to the sidewalk stars on Second Avenue, where the deli lived for more than 50 years. The old Zinfandel vine represents being rooted to the land, hence the “Landsman.” Though you can’t tell online, the label’s surface is tactile, evoking the sense that you’re buying into something greater than you might imagine.
5 & 6. Robert Foley Vineyards

Artist: Ellen Riendeau of Soda Rock Studios Winemaker: Robert Foley robertfoleyvineyards.com They say that labels sporting animals sell better than those without. A mythological griffin ups the ante. This stark label feels masculine, bold, and regal—qualities that make the bottle hard to resist in a crowd. Winemaker Bob Foley is one of Napa’s most celebrated Merlot vintners, and the griffin was taken directly from a Foley family crest. An earlier design (pictured left) featured the complete Crest and Coat of Arms, but in 2005 the griffin went solo.
7. Sainte Fumee, Behran’s Family Winery

Artists: Original painting by Owen Smith, back label graphics by Brian Nash Winemaker: Les Behrens behrensfamilywinery.com Bring this wine home and try explaining to your girlfriend that you bought it because of who made the wine, and not because the label is sexy. And definitely do not use the word sexy. This is a label of love—specifically, Les Behrens’ love for his wife Lisa, who was a chef at a restaurant they started together years ago called Folie Douce. Artist Owen Smith painted this “Angel of Meat,” and to Les, she seemed to embody the personality of the wine, which is a “spicy, sassy Rhône blend.”
8. Naughty Sticky and Naughty Racy, Reynolds Family Winery

Artists: Steve Reynolds and Fred Schwartz Winemaker: Steve Reynolds reynoldsfamilywinery.com At first glance you might not think this is a wine, but rather someone’s attempt to fool you into buying something from Ricky’s. What started as a for-the-hell-of-it experiment utilizing left-over fruit, the “Naughty” series has grown into a successful second label for Steve Reynolds of Reynolds Family Winery. The original imagery came from Internet clip-art—something to slap on a label that bore the words, “Just For Fun.” Graphic designer Fred Schwartz helped refine the image. The “Sticky” refers to the dessert-wine producing regions of Australia, and not what you might have been thinking.
9. The Natural Process Alliance, Salinia Wine Company

Artist and winemaker: Kevin Kelley naturalprocessalliance.us Man meets Earth—that’s what inspired Kevin Kelley’s label design. The winemaker tells us, “One day I was out working in a vineyard low to the ground. Instead of towering over the vine cutting and bending it into conformation, I was in the dirt at the vine’s level seeing what it needed, not what I wanted.” For Kelley, the relationship between soil and vine is a closed, finite system that the farmer must exist within. The concern for this ecosystem carries over to the container: A stainless-steel canteen that is meant to be reused/refilled.
10. MIX – SunHawk Farms, Salinia Wine Company

Artist and winemaker: Kevin Kelley salinia.com Kelley also caught our attention with this label for a wine from SunHawk Farms in Mendocino, California. It gives off the air of being “artisanal” with an eye-catching collage of grizzlies, insects, and farming tools. It could almost be mistaken for a bomber of microbrewed beer. Kelley tells us that he was inspired by SunHawk’s own biodiversity, and the fact that the farm’s daily residents are “inseparable from the land and from the wine.” The name MIX appears as an ambigram, which is something you might expect from the likes of one Abe Schoener.
11. Instant Napa, Swanson Vineyards

Artist: Jean-Phillippe Delhomme Winemaker: Chris Phelps swansonvineyards.com A label promising instant transportation to Napa? Sold. Spontaneous joie de vivre is a message you’d want any bottle of wine to evoke, and that’s exactly what the party in the picture is promising. Swanson is celebrating 25 years of winemaking with this Anniversary Cuvee, and the label, designed by Parisian illustrator Jean-Phillippe Delhomme, aims to capture the many core characters of the winery—from owner Clarke Swanson, to daughters Alexis and Claiborne, to regulars of the tasting room.
12. Cabernet Sauvignon, Mueller Family Vineyards

Artists: Steve Sorman and Paulette Nolan muellerfamilyvineyards.com This Diamond Mountain Cabernet boasts a label that has us wondering if bocce ball was perhaps the inspiration. Turns out that the Muellers originally lived in Minnesota, where it’s cold 13 months out of the year and families have to huddle together to keep alive. That creates a special bond and the notion of family (not bocce, though they do play in a Napa league) is the inspiration behind this label design. A family friend, artist Steve Sorman, who Frank Mueller knew from back in the North Star State, was experimenting with techniques that involved intricate layering of shapes and colors. They liked the concepts but couldn’t arrive at a label, when another friend, Paulette Nolan, took Sorman’s conceptual designs to a format that symbolized the family: Frank, Angie, Nicolette, and Claire, each represented by a colored “dot” at the point of a simulated diamond.
13. Taste Rose, Bedell Cellars

Artist: Barbara Kruger bedellcellars.com It’s fun when a label is shocking yet somehow familiar. This is often the case when a winery commissions a well-known artist to design a label, which is a common big-brand move (e.g., Mouton Rothschild’s artists series), but executed very nicely here. Bedell Winery, situated on Long Island’s North Fork, began commissioning artists in 2005 to bring their aesthetic to bear on each vintage’s label. For internationally renowned artist Barbara Kruger, the idea that “taste” influences “what we love, how we live, and who we think we are” set the tone for this striking design. Kruger fans likely do a double-take when they stumble across this wine in a retail shop.
14. Arise, Blackbird Vineyards

Artist: David Hughes with Level Design Winemaker: Aaron Pott blackbirdvineyards.com To the average drinker, the precarious placement of these little Blackbirds along five lines might not seem that meaningful, but if your mind works in musical ways, you just might see that there’s more than meets the eye. Designer David Hughes believes that every artist needs a muse. And for Paul Leary, Michael Polenske, and Aaron Pott—the team behind the Blackbird labels—there is no muse better suited for this wine than the Beatles and their song “Blackbird.” As a tribute, the birds on the label are arranged to mimic the musical notes from the line, “Blackbird singing in the dead of night.” We hope the next release upgrades the label to a singing wine-o-gram.
15. A Tribute To Grace, Grace Wine Company

Artist: New Zealand born Art Director and Designer, Nicole Sykes Winemaker: Angela Osborne gracewinecompany.com What we like about this label is its simplicity and curiosity-provoking name. Is Grace a person? Is this a wine to open on Thanksgiving? Well, so the story goes, on Turkey Day in 2006, winemaker Angela Osborne was walking along a beach in Encinitas, California, thinking of her family far away in New Zealand, particularly her Nana Grace. Childhood instinct kicked in, inclining her to write the word grace in the sand with the big toe of her right foot. Bam! She had a design—almost. This is where New Zealand-born art director and designer, Nicole Sykes, came into the picture, sourcing a font that was rather similar to the trail left by Osborne’s big toe. Skykes also layered a cluster of pressed Queen Anne's Lace, which was one of Grace’s favorite flowers. Hence a label was born, one that is literally A Tribute To Grace.
16 & 17 & 18. Taken, Available, Complicated; Taken Wine Company

Artist: Peter Maloney Winemaker: Josh Phelps, Carlo Trinchero takenwine.com Wine, what’s your status? Are you Taken or Available—or is it Complicated? With some artistic guidance from childhood friend Peter Maloney, next-gen winemakers Josh Phelps and Carlo Trinchero have brought Facebook’s relationship status feature to bear on the vino world. What we love about these labels is that once you’ve got the classification down—Taken is a red wine, Available is white, and Complicated is rosé—you know exactly who to approach at the BBQ. So, go on married man, talk to the girl with the glass of red—it’s okay, she’s Taken.
19. The Seeker Chardonnay and Malbec, The Seeker Wines

Artists: Design team at Kobrand Winemaker: Didier Debono theseekerwines.com Two questions: Who doesn’t like the idea of a mythological impresario traveling the world in a hot-air balloon? Or that of a real flying contraption that looks like a bird and actually flies? This is a wine label for day-dreamers. It offers the possibilities of a world where tipsy artists, scientists, and modern-day thinkers crisscross the sky shouting at each other, waving fists, and demanding the know the secrets of the universe. The concept and design for these labels came out of a team effort from Kobrand.
20. Melee, Tuck Beckstoffer Wines

Artist: Nate Williams Winemaker: Tuck Beckstoffer and Drew Huffine tbwines.com The Beckstoffer’s have owned many of the most coveted vineyards in the Napa Valley. Their label is a true work of art by award-winning illustrator Nate Williams. It is representative of the infamous Beckstoffer Melee, which is a story that need come straight from Tuck Beckstoffer himself: “We were sitting in an ‘executive’ meeting at my company and I informed my CFO that I had spent about $100,000 that was unbudgeted on Grenache grapes that I ‘just had to have.’ He mumbled, ‘This was a fucking melee.’ I asked him to repeat what he had said, and he repeated himself a bit louder. I then announced that he had just sullied us with the name for the wine. True story. And possibly the most creative thing a CFO has ever done.”

Judge a Wine By Its Label: 20 Bottles That Looks As Good As They Taste

1. Mourvedre, Dirty & Rowdy

2. Covenant, Covenant

3. RED C, Covenant

4. Landsman, Covenant

5 & 6. Robert Foley Vineyards

7. Sainte Fumee, Behran’s Family Winery

8. Naughty Sticky and Naughty Racy, Reynolds Family Winery

9. The Natural Process Alliance, Salinia Wine Company

10. MIX – SunHawk Farms, Salinia Wine Company

11. Instant Napa, Swanson Vineyards

12. Cabernet Sauvignon, Mueller Family Vineyards

13. Taste Rose, Bedell Cellars

14. Arise, Blackbird Vineyards

15. A Tribute To Grace, Grace Wine Company

16 & 17 & 18. Taken, Available, Complicated; Taken Wine Company

19. The Seeker Chardonnay and Malbec, The Seeker Wines

20. Melee, Tuck Beckstoffer Wines

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