Wine

Sipping with the Animals

Critter Labels and Fetching Wines

    In the mid-1990s, a young South African–born chef, Jeremy Borg, wanted to learn how to make wine. Jeremy had been cooking at Oliveto in Oakland when he came to work for us at Rosenblum Cellars. During the crush, he cooked up great lunches so the winery could take a break for family-style meals.
    Around the same time, taking a cue from my veterinary background, we launched our Château La Paws label with a wine we called Cote Du Bone Roan—a fun takeoff on both the French Burgundy, Cotes du Beaune, and the Rhône wine region (“roan” is actually the color of a horse). This label featured a large dog bone and paw prints that walked across the wine bottle.
    When Jeremy went back to South Africa, he started working for the Fairview winery, whose property also boasted a goat farm that specialized in chèvre cheeses. The cheese was selling, but the wine wasn’t. So in 1997, Jeremy came up with a unique label called Goats Do Roam, which soon became one of South Africa’s best-selling export wines and is now available all over the world.
    In the last 10 years, we have seen an explosion of wine brands with animal-related themes. Australia’s Yellow Tail wines, primarily Chardonnay and Shiraz (the Aussie term for Syrah), feature a colorful illustration of a wallaby on the label. This has been the fastest-growing brand in the United States five years in a row, and it now sells more than 5 million cases each year. Another upcoming brand, from California’s central coast, is Rex Goliath, which features a giant rooster on the label. (The 47-pound behemoth bird was a star attraction at a Texas circus in the early 1900s.) The wines include “Free Range” Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Rex Goliath was recently acquired by Gallo, so I suspect you’ll start to see its range expanding.
    From the California foothills comes a wine called Dog Tail. The brightly colored labels for Fire Hydrant Red and Watchdog White show a dog digging a hole in the vineyard—only its posterior is showing. The back label calls the product “Just a great whine.” Another California producer, FishEye, markets several varietals, including Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. The back label claims, “This wine jumps out of your glass.”
    So why are these wines so popular? They are fun, inexpensive (most are $5.99 to $10.99) and demystifying. They take the snobbery out of wine appreciation and encourage people to trust what they like and to make wine an everyday beverage without feeling like they’re breaking the bank. Across the board, they taste pretty good, too.
    In another fun development, Rosenblum Cellars has recently teamed with Paws with a Cause, a group that trains and deploys hearing dogs, service dogs, seizure-response dogs and social-support dogs. Headquartered in Michigan and active in 30 states, Paws with a Cause trains each dog to suit the individual client’s needs, free. To help support this charity, Rosenblum Cellars donates 50 cents from the sale of each bottle of Château La Paws wine.
    As it says on the back label of the Australian wine Little Penguin, “They gather together to forage and share.” Let’s do the same, and don’t forget the wine—or to paws and enjoy it.