Bottled Art
The Age
Tuesday September 3, 2002
Wine making is a fine art - but for some wine makers, art is a serious matter, too.
reasts and nude, nubile girls on your wine labels will get you into deep, deep trouble with the US trade authorities.
You can try to call it art, as Peter Lehmann Wines attempted to do - unsuccessfully - in 1996 when its semillon with a daring young Queen of Clubs fully exposed on the label was about to be rejected in the US as lewd and offensive.
A cover-up was carried out to avoid a federal case being made out of the matter, so to speak. The affair gave rise to one of Peter Lehmann's more memorable remarks:
"It's ironical that a country where people are almost encouraged to carry handguns can't cope with the sight of bare tits."
In the same year, Chateau Mouton-Rothschild - the aristocratic Bordeaux wine maker who started the whole artist-label thing in 1924 - lost a case for artistic licence when a reclining nude, a pre-pubescent girl painted by Balthus for its wine label, was rejected in the US. In protest, Mouton replaced the art with bare space.
There's a message here and it's: don't fool around with wine and art. Wine makers take their art very seriously, sometimes more than their wine.
Tricia Horgan, chief executive of Leeuwin Estate, says when she and husband Denis set about establishing the Margaret River vinous landmark in 1974, they had a deep interest in art. "We probably had more of an interest in art than we had in wine when we started," she says. "Wine was a steeper learning curve."
The choice of art selected to adorn Leeuwin wines over the years has varied in style and form but one image has endured: John Olsen's frogs.
"We'd seen sketches of John's frogs and we really loved his frogs and we asked him to paint one," explains Horgan. "He came up with four and he said, 'You choose one'.'
"And nobody chose the same one so we decided we'd take them all."
The frogs, like all good wine art, work well because the drinker can make a connection. Olsen's bright-green and yellow splashes of colour are the same colours as young riesling.
The label is fresh, clean (like the wine) and the frogs - legs akimbo - are vibrant
and fun. And you don't see a lot of fun in wine art.
Horgan says she has recently rejected some artwork from John Kelly's Dobell's Cows series because droll as it was, it showed cows copulating. Pity, it sounds absolutely right for a pinot noir label.
With some wine art, the connection with things vinous is lost, possibly because there was none in the first place. It's simply meant to be a statement about enjoying all the good things of life: art, wine, food. That's why so many winery cellar doors now boast cafes and art galleries.
Meadowbank outside Hobart doesn't boast a single art scene on its labels but its winery is a haven (and financial bonanza since commissions aren't paid) for local artists. Sculptures, sugar paintings on windows, garden art, photography, etchings and musical soirees have been an essential part of the winery since its restaurant and gallery opened mid-2000. A witty and regular exhibition-holder is wine and food-loving artist and sometime chef Tom Samek.
Over in the Barossa Valley, wine makers have also developed a strong bond with art and, in particular, with one man, Rod Schubert. At last count, seven Barossa wineries had called upon Schubert to convey his unique Barossan warmth and spirit on their labels. There is no exclusivity here - he belongs to them all and is a regional treasure to share. It's a relationship that dates back 20 years or more.
"The thing about him is we [Barossan wine makers] have been able to trust our wine soul to him," says close friend Margaret Lehmann, of Peter Lehmann Wines. "He's never betrayed anyone's confidence and he has always come up with something that is expressive of that company and wine-making style and that's because he does know us so well."
Schubert, who now has one-man exhibitions in the Lehmann and St Hallett cellar doors, was called upon to create art for Lehmann's move into unfamiliar wine territory, a French-oaked, elegant shiraz of refined beauty called Eight Songs. Schubert came up with eight different paintings and Lehmann used all of them in an Eight Songs boxed presentation pack. "It's a tribute to Rod, art and wine," she says.
The artist doesn't get much closer to the wine-making process, wine or to the wine's creator than Rosa Purbrick does with wine-making husband Alister of Tahbilk Wines.
They have collaborated for 10 years on their Dalfarras range, a separate wine entity to Tahbilk both in style and marketing. Rosa Purbrick calls her move from still-life paintings in the 1990s to today's eclectic mix of wine bits and pieces featuring on Dalfarras labels a "natural progression".
"As an artist as you get more confident, you tend to get braver and start putting things together that the mainstream might not necessarily accept," she says.
Bits of bark off Tahbilk's 1860s shiraz vines, winery filter pads stained brown (port), bright pink (red wine) and green tinged (white wine) and lengths of vine cane cut to different sizes are part of a group of work the artist calls Vine Fascination.
Take a look at what appears to be a dot painting on the 2002 Dalfarras verdelho and it's actually a cork board of used and unused wine corks.
Living on the grounds of the Nagambie winery, Purbrick has everyday wine-making operations to inspire her but a suggestion that she move into painting with wine (as does Bordeaux artist Philippe Dufrenoy) - and here the concentrated colour and texture of Tahbilk's $120 1860 Old Vines would be perfect - is met with caution.
That, she says, would depend on the wine maker.
© 2002 The Age
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