Bottle Labels – 2021

by Bryan · Published August 28, 2023 · Updated January 25, 2025

Wines Bottled in 2021

Note: These labels are from wines bottled in 2021, not started in 2021.

In the summer 2020, Patrick asked me to make wine for his wedding reception, scheduled for October 2021. It didn’t give me a lot of time — well in “wine” time, so I started Winexpert Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay kits in September 2020.

I bottled the wines on 17 April 2021, although we did not label until just before the reception. I used a picture from Grace’s sister’s wedding.

I was going to leave the winery name and logo off the label, but Grace wanted it on, so I reduce size so the emphasis remained on the happy couple.

I also made a joke label that both Patrick and Grace liked. I labeled 25% of the wine with the joke label, which was on display at their reception.

Year 2021 was a revolution in my label making.

Looking at the labels others posted on WineMakingTalk spurred me to revamp my designs in several ways, and the labels for Grace & Patrick was the start.

One factor is that my elder son and I are collaborating on wines. He had trouble coming up with a winery name he liked, so I suggested that we continue the collaboration with a common name: Fazekas Family Winery.

I created a logo for him, a longsword wound by a grape vine. All his wines will have his logo, as mine have the Grape Warrior. For wines we collaborate? We put his label on half and mine on the other half.

We also started using an image as a background so there is very little white space. I take images I find on the net and fade them using Paint.NET. If I was a commercial winery I’d ensure I had legal rights for commercial purposes, but as an amateur whose bottles will be seen by less than a dozen family and friends, I don’t worry about it.

Although it’s hard to see at the reduced size, I manually cleaned up the Grape Warrior graphic my friend Geoff built for me. White was visible between the various graphics that comprise the image — I used paint.NET to color in the white so the overall graphic is cleaner.

Eric made a kit, and I designed the following label with the background graphic lightened. This is my first label where the background plays a prominent place in the foreground of the label.

Although the 2020 West Coast grapes are in 2 main batches, I reserved an unoaked gallon of each batch, which includes the Merlot, Zinfandel, and Vinifera Blend, plus an unoaked gallon of the Meritage and Meritage Plus. These are being saved for comparison on an annual basis.

Since I have 5 bottles of each, I created a basic design and varied the background gradient to help distinguish them. No one outside of Eric & I, plus a few selected taste testers will ever see the bottles.