“Epileptic Inspiration 2013? You have no respect!”, a Swiss guy told me on a recent trip to Zurich.
Since the beginning of BLANKbottle, I have been designing my own labels. At first, it was because there was absolutely no way I could afford designers. I made use of Microsoft Word, typed BLANKbottle, placed it into a block and played around with the colours – no designing skills required at all. Over the years, however, I started embracing the importance of physically being involved with even this process of the final product. And, to be honest, for the first 10 years I actually didn’t like my labels much (besides maybe the honesty of it). Every year, I would again have to fight off the desire to employ professional label designers.
For those of you who don’t know this: I have epilepsy which the doctors control with medication. But I absolutely hate taking pills. So I was relieved when the dr said I could leave my medication a while back. Then, in November 2013, while not on medication, I had a huge epileptic fit. So the Dr booked me off driving and surfing, yet again. Now when this happens to me, at first, I forget everything. My long term memory returns quite soon but the short term analytical memory takes about 2-3 months to return – if at all. But I discovered a huge upside to this: financial pressures and other stress factors disappeared together with the rest of my short term memory! So when I couldn’t remember what to stress about, it blew my creative side right open.
And this is when I started to design my new labels for the 2013 wines. This time not using the computer much but rather making use of scissors, paint, Lino, pencil and old paper. And the result: I think I had a breakthrough in design, inspiration of Epileptic proportions.
I am not saying it is great nor am I saying that it is better than my previous ones. All I am saying is that I personally LOVE IT! All 19 new ones coming your way in 2014.
So the story has nothing to do with the wine – a straight Semillon from Elgin. I am not a fan of greener wines and therefore concentrate on picking the grapes when it is ripe. The juice gets no sulphur before fermentation, no acid, enzymes etc. It settles overnight and goes to old wood, spontaneously ferments and stays a year in barrel on the leese and then to bottle.
