Cinderella Wine
Labels
By
A Cinderella in philatelic terms is defined on the Cinderella Stamp Club’s web site (http://www.cinderellastampclub.org.uk/ ) as “Local stamps, telegraph stamps, railway stamps, revenues/fiscals, forgeries, bogus and phantom issues. Christmas, Red Cross, TB and other charity seals, registration labels, advertisement and exhibition labels and many other items…”. The phrase “many other items” includes a multitude of minor stamp-like categories. Among the more curious that have found their way into existence: copyright royalty stamps found on old gramophone records, glove and mitten duty stamps, chemical reagent bottle deposit labels, and now, a wine label.
Mr. Moon had held on to the idea for the design from his childhood, “I was a stamp collector as a kid. I learned about the ’Inverted Jenny‘ and it always fascinated me. I think it represented the first time I saw our government as fallible. I could never quite figure out how or why a stamp could get printed with an upside down airplane? As an adult I learned that ’Inverted Jenny‘ events happen every split second in government offices around the country“
Of course the stamp Jim is referring to is the 1918 US airmail 24 cent stamp (Scott C3a) known as the Inverted Jenny. Only one sheet of 100 stamps is known to exist of this famous error stamp, and over the last ninety years some of those stamps have never been found. The 2006 Specialized Cataloge of United States Stamps & Covers lists a single unhinged mint stamp for $325,000; there are no known used copies of the stamp.
“On the serious side” Jim Moon Continued, “I reasoned that rare stamps and wine had similar characteristics. Wine is hand crafted and a great deal of care, energy and treasure goes into every aspect of its production from vines to the retailer’s shelf. The Inverted Jenny had everything going for it; wood-block illustration, an old archival look and feel plus the colors – perfect for red wine. Together with illustrator Tom Hennessy, we presented a rough of the concept to the Benton-Lane owners. It was one of those moments designers rarely experience – love at first sight.”
The first Pinot Noir 1992 wine label won top honors with a
Double Gold Award in the 1994 San Francisco International Wine Competition;
this was the first year the wine was sold.
When asked if he had won any other awards with the label Jim offered,
“Last year I entered the 2004 Pinot Gris in the same competition and it won a
Silver medal.” He went on to say that he
has only used the stamp-like design for Benton-Lane wines, as it is not good
business for a graphic designer to reuse material.
For the label design they used the outer vignette from the
stamp design as a model and filled the middle of the label with a black
engraving of a stylized representation of a vineyard. On the wine label the vineyard is depicted, right
side up. The lower left and right corners
of the red outer vignette have circles that display two digits of the year the
wine was bottled. A close look at the
label reveals that the vignette is a better match to the U.S. Parcel Post stamps of 1913, Scott Q1
through Q12, rather than the vignette that encircles the airplane on
C3a. However the early air mail stamps
and the parcel post stamps are quite similar and were designed in the
distinctive style of Clair Aubrey Huston, one the more accomplished postage
stamp designers at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in the early twentieth
century.
Since that first bottling the Benton-Lane Winery has expanded and now produces many different wines, all sold in bottles labeled with variations of the original label. One wine’s label shows the stamp with a gold “First Class” cancel. Another label has the stamp canceled with a partial depiction of a round cancel in gold. All the other labels have color and name variations in the vignette. One is orange brown for the Pinot Blanc and one is light green for the Pinot Gris. The last label has a pink boarder and is for the Rose. All the labels have the same center design made to look like a line engraving of a stylized vineyard with trees, mountains and clouds in the background all in black. No inverts are known to exist.
Link to Benton-Lane Vineyards: http://www.benton-lane.com/home.html
If you send a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope to the Vineyard at the address below they will be glad to return several unused examples of the wine labels. The labels are approximately 2 x 3 inches and should fit in a standard #10 envelope.
Benton-Lane Winery
PO Box
23924 Territorial Hwy.
Phone: 541-847-5792