wine

I am not so sure these two go together — but what the hell. Good Catholic Girl wine is Shiraz from Australia. It’s imported by (I should have guessed it) The Grateful Palate of Oxnard, California. It’s a tribute to the winemaker’s grandmother “who was the quintessential GCG.” About as far as possible from an Australian wine is He’Brew Rejewvenator Ale, made in Saratoga Springs, New York. The Man Room seems to have a copy of the announcement for this beer:

Rejewvenator ferments nearly 500 gallons of Fig juice into a half doppleboch, half Belgian inspired dubbel hybrid lager/ale. … With projected 2008 annual sales at over $1.5 million, Shmaltz Brewing is no longer a one-man operation of sole proprietor Jeremy Cowan. Matching his 550% sales increase with 500% growth of his staff, Shmaltz Brewing now operates with five full-time employees.

They sound good. Together?

We thought this was a good example of unusual label design, and so did Mike Carter. Mike probably knows quite a bit more about art and design, compared to us, but then again we’ve looked at as many wine labels as anyone. Who is Mike Carter?

For more than a decade Mike has been helping wine companies reduce their print & packaging costs and improve supply chain efficiency. Mike is also a published author with articles published on wine.co.za, Practical Winery & Vineyard and WineLand magazines. Mike earned his MBA at Bond University and lives in Somerset West, South Africa.

His blog covers wine label design, very well. We also wanted to mention the above label because The Grateful Palate seems to have a propensity to find uncommon labels. We have showed their Punk and Evil wine labels in the past.

We have giant stacks of shocking and outrageous labels, and yet we keep coming back to this one. It is simple, calm, soothing, and far from outrageous. We are no experts in graphics or design, but we think this is probably the result of superior design. For the best in consumer products design and packaging, we defer to The Dieline; they do a great job covering beer, wine and spirits design issues. Another tremendous source of information about wine label design is Mike Carter’s Serious About Wine. We wonder if Mike, or The Dieline, or anyone else out there can help us narrow down who are the best alcohol beverage label designers around these days. As the back label says, “it lingers.”