Les Welcome
Whether by intent or tragic mis-typing, you’ve landed on the home of Les Garagistes winery collective. If you’re new to our dark cabal, a rich and heady stew of bad French grammar and subterranean winemaking awaits. But where to start? Here are a few suggestions:
- First, you might take a quick stroll through last year’s vintage escapades, accumulated over the two critical months of September 2009 and October 2009 (remember that the posts are presented with the earliest at the bottom of the page).
- Then, who are these Garagistes and where do they get off? And didn’t I hear they were dead?
- Winehenge: the movie. If that’s not enough to get you to click…
- A French oak barrel primer
- Red, Rex Sox (Yankees fans, be forewarned)
- Plastic capsules and why we switched to paper
- 2009 Blending Trials: we go for the decimals!
- Lastly, mourn with the Moody Blues as they appear to lament the end of a Les Garagistes harvest.
Thanks much for stopping by. We’ve got fruit lined up for 2010 — with new varietals ensuring we’ll be making even more up as we go along — so another exciting vintage is just ahead. Hope you can join us for it, and let us know what you think of what we’ve cobbled together.
This year’s models
I finally had a chance to shoot our current stable of wine releases, which — holy crap — are kind of numerous. Who snuck into our basement and made all this wine, anyway?
From left to right, ya got yer:
- 2008 Aldercreek Syrah
- 2008 Cowan Cabernet Sauvignon
- 2009 Peugeot Nouveau (Coyote Canyon)
- 2008 Porto (piloted by Aldercreek Merlot)
- 2008 Cowan Cabernet Franc
- 2008 Aldercreek Merlot
- 2008 Oracle Vineyard Pinot Noir
The new label design was driven by a need to capture a little more of the Garagistes’ essential subversiveness, while still presenting a fancy enough front that we can continue to pretend we’re real winemakers. So I dug through some archival clip art to find tools and other gewgaws you might find in a French garage, then tried to pair them with the personality of our various wines.
Some are more successful than others, to be sure. I think the caliper for the Cab Sauv is the shakiest, in part because its essential P shape is a bit of a miscue. Its first home was on the Pinot, actually, but then I fell in love with how racy and devil-may-care the goggles felt on that wine. But calipers do suggest some sense of precision, so I suppose they’re not inappropriate for a Cabernet (though our Cabernet? Well…).
My most brilliant stroke, of course, was using a tricycle for the just-out-of-swaddling-clothes Nouveau, because that gives us a chance to finally break into the child market.
More pics and a frantic disavowal of what I just said after the jump…
This is the arty shot we’ll probably use for my design firm’s portfolio. Yes, differential focus has been done, to put it mildly, but it can’t be beat for how efficiently it guides you around an image. And plus, it’s still cool! (er, isn’t it?)
We continued the eco-practice of using bits of paper to “top” our wines instead of PVC plastic capsules, but I tried to improve their secondary function as wine labels. When wine is stored on its side in a case or a rack, it’s pretty difficult to determine what it is without pulling it out. Now, of course there can be a certain pleasure in pulling out wine after wine in search of something — cooing and adjusting your pince nez for a better look at the rascal — but this way, you have a choice.
The luscious, strangely lubricating Porto. I love that bottle. Hard to see online, but the oil can says “Xarope” — wines like this are what they put on pancakes in Portugal, apparently. Mmmmmm…
And yes, I was kidding about marketing to children. Teenagers have a lot more disposable income.
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WOW Love the one w/ the goggles on the pinot noir. But fabulous, gorgeous, beautiful design for all. My those http://www.grapheon.com/ folks are talented!