I totally get that this label might be too Gothic, turn-offy, and possibly terrifying for some people:

Fine. That doesn’t mean that wines have to do this:

Or this:

And for god’s sake not this:

We’ve already talked about how wineries seem to be getting it wrong when trying to market to younger people, so I was happy to see someone doing it sort of right label-wise.

I recently had dinner with awesome Katie Madigan, the winemaker at St. Francis, who brought along a bunch of the wines she’s made including two blends called Splash. “I call these wines my picnic wines since I know they’ll pair well with whatever’s brought to the blanket,” she said. They’re easy drinking and well priced at $13 each: the red’s a Cabernet blend (Katie’s designated “outdoor summer concert wine”) and the white’s a refreshing and not-overly-sweet Gewurztraminer (“such a beautiful and perfumey aroma”) blend.

These are just simple wines – very fruit-forward and approachable – and they wanted to make labels to reflect that. Each label is a scattered “splash” design which looks sort of Jackson Pollacky, doesn’t it? And the even cooler things is that the splash pattern on every bottle is different. So unique! And thankfully, not at all vile.