Our Wine Brand Name - Black Cloud.

A little while back we asked friends, family and associates from the world of wine to help us come up with a name for our new wine brand.
We were flooded with replies.
Two things we learned.

• People really want to help and will take time to offer what they can.
• the people who do this professionally have talent and skills.

Some of the suggestions were excellent and gave us a reason to carefully consider their candidacy. Others, obviously tongue-in-cheek, were quite amusing.

We've made our decision and now we've retained Magpye Productions and Ann O'Grady to start with our logo and label design. Ann has done some great work with Lake Breeze Farm winery and a host of others. We feel good about our meetings we've had and look forward to looking at some samples in the early New Year. Hopefully we'll be able to share some for your perusal.

On another front, we are working on our incorporation documents and securing our brand integrity in a number of ways including copyright.

After weeks of pondering, mulling, analysis, consensus-building and teeth-grinding we're decided to call our wine brand

Black Cloud

Holiday Wine List

Paul over at the WINE PRO group on LinkedIn was asking:
What are you drinking over the holidays?
Usually I leave these things to the wine review blogs. But I started thinking about it and got all warm and fuzzy so I wrote something like this:

For the 'go-to' have-on-hand wine I'm going to search out some Cotes Rotie and other Rhonish varietals. There seems to me more of these grapes available to us each year. Best to get some research done.

The wife and I like to sip on cava as we chore, errand and task about the house with all the seasonal duties. Scrubbing the bathroom fixtures seems almost glamorous with a flute of bubble at hand. We tend to like some of the inexpensive Australian sparklers like Wolf Blass. The price is right at $13.99. We'll crack a domestic like Sumac Ridge's Steller's Jay or my own Township 7 Seven Stars if company is coming over and I have to pull on a clean shirt.

We aren't travelling for Christmas so the big turkey feast will be next year. We usually do duck for when it's just me,she and the boy. Duck is one of the few things in the world he likes. Probably team it up with Pinot Noir. I don't have an '05 Sokol Blosser (the link is to the '06)which is undeniably wicked cool. I will probably open a Black Cloud 2006. Black Cloud? Coming soon. Available in the early New Year. You read it here first.

New Year's Eve? I'll be a guest and drink whatever is put out. New Year's Day, however, is different. The plan is to fire up the outdoor grill and have a few folks over for mixed grill and pasta for a mid-day brunch kind of thingy. Maybe the Thomas Fogarty 2004 Fiddletown Barbera. Hope it's sunny and mild. We like to start the year like that and send photos to friends out east.

Any given night, with the snow swirling outside and the fire embering nicely, we'll pop an NV Port and crack some walnuts while we congratulate ourselves for another great year of us.

Can A Winery Name Be Arrogant?

Looky here! It's December already. Before the holiday entertaining schedule ramps up to full speed I thought I'd pop up a post.

Working through the mountain of name suggestions for our new wine brand has been very educational. At one point I was a little exasperated with our inability to really 'love' any one suggestion. I expressed this to a colleague and he suggested -

"Why not just call it Bradley Cooper? Everything you've done rests on your name. It's already got some presence."

When I presented that option to the partner it was if I had brought a bad smell into the room.

"That's conceited and arrogant. I don't want to work for Bradley Cooper Wines. This is a partnership!"

The lambasting softened somewhat when I said, "Kim Crawford, Robert Mondavi, Thomas Fogarty and a host of others". It's not a new concept.

So as it stands now, we may select a name that means something to us, and start building the value and the story around the name or we may go for arrogance.

What do you think? Is naming a winery after an individual a 'no-go'? I await your pithy response.