What's in a Label?

     So here it is, the story of the "Fishy Label" on our '06 Reserve Chardonnay bottle. Well as you may or may not have noticed, all of our olive oil, wine, and honey labels have a reoccurring theme; local Northern CA wildlife to be exact. There are owls, coyotes, bees, and mountain lions which we depict on all of our labels except the 2006 Reserve Chardonnay, on which resides a strange looking fish strait out of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". If you haven't seen the movie, please indulge yourself :).

     This fish is not a rather cartoonish rendition of a species from the nearby Russian River. It is a painting by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel, aka, Ernst Haeckel, born 1834, died 1919. Here we thought Spaniards had long names. Ernst Haeckle was a German biologist, author, artist, and several other monikers somebody on Wikipedia tagged him with. As somewhat of a champion of biology, he coined many terms which are still widely used today such as ecology and phylum. He was a major supporter of Charles Darwin and heavily promoted his theories in Germany. Mr. Haeckel traveled quite extensively and drew rather lavish renditions of species he observed and even named. A quick peruse through some of his art works reveals a scientist with an amazing artistic side, or maybe the other way around?
 
     Anyways, as we were going through the process of designing new labels and Lucien dug up the fish drawing. It's a very beautiful drawing as many of Haeckel's are, and it might not be a member of the local ecology but it's still an animal, thus not entirely deviating from the theme of our labels. Being manufacturers and proprietors of wine and olive oil, we're inclined to have an artsy streak in us. The label has been received well overall with a few skeptics out there. All in all, it's been flying off the shelves in most places but has still received some negative response. After much battling we resigned to agreeing that we can see how people might find the label a little peculiar however we still love it and at the end of the bottle, it's what you just drank that counts. Right?

Link to tasting notes
Ernst Haeckel Wikipedia