The Name
The Absurd is the best wine we make, without any rules.

The Label
With a wine like The Absurd, we figured the label had to be sedate and serious, or it needed to push the envelope. We went with the latter. We asked a friend, Richard Von Saal, a designer, builder, architect and artist, to have a go at it. He’d never done a wine label before. “First I was thinking of M.C. Escher, like a vortex, where the pheromones of the wine just suck you in.” Then Richard went to an estate sale and found a stack of old Playboys from the 60s and 70s. “First I spotted a cartoon with a picture of Shakespeare. And as I kept leafing through, all the images were so absurd and outrageous. I decided to describe the wine with them.” Richard bought the whole stack, combed through them all, and assembled a collage of absurd images to represent this most absurd wine.

Richard’s thoughts on some of the images he chose:

Monkeys (see no evil, speak no evil, smell no evil) – “What’s more absurd then NOT smelling a wine. It’s about as absurd as it gets.”

Clock – “It takes time to make wine, time to grow it, to make it, to age it.”

Chess pieces – “There’s strategy involved in making a wine like this. It’s carefully calculated. You have to push yourself through a lot of obstacles.”

Poker cards – “’Cause there’s always luck involved too.”

Bullseye – “Benoit hit it.”

Smiley face – “The Absurd makes you happy.”

Butterfly – “Wine starts as a cocoon. When it comes out of barrel, it’s a multi-colored butterfly.”

Superman – “Absurd is a strong wine, with the power to seduce women.”

Devil with a violin – “There’s a little devil in everything.”