Dr Vino’s wine blog

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The groan committee has met! Thanks for your suggestions of the most groan-inducing wine name. There are many bad wine names out there but it was interesting that no fewer than three people observed that once they pulled the cork on the wine, it wasn’t half bad. Producers take note.

Here are the four “groan cru” (sorry, had to do it) wine names. Vote now for the worst offender! And remember, this isn’t for the worst label design, just the name, hence no finalist labels are shown to distract us.

What’s in a name? When it comes to wine, it’s quite often sales.

Names, of course, don’t affect the taste. As the great wordsmith Shakespeare might have put it, a wine by another name would smell as dry with a hint of raspberry, leather, and garrigue. But sometimes the name can make us groan, roll our eyes, and not buy the bottle.

Consider Rosenblum Cellars’ Chateau La Paws Cote du Bone Roan red (about $14; find this wine). I’ve seen the wine on store shelves, groaned, and kept walking. But I recently tried it at a trade tasting and the heck if it isn’t purdy darned good! But I’d still never buy it. OK, maybe as a gift for my dog-loving sister-in-law. Once. Or for some other friends who are very into their adorable puppies. But only once then too. Moving on!

Which wines out there have the most groan-inducing names? (A Groan Cru, if you will.) Hit the comments with your thoughts. Next week, we’ll narrow the field and let the voting begin! And please note, this is for names only; the aesthetes had their say recently with the worst label design.

Thank you for your submissions in the worst wine label contest! Here we have it: the finalists!

I recruited two judges to help whittle down the field to five labels and they are now available for your voting after the jump. But first, the judges: Steve De Long, known to many for his fine aesthetic work on the various products at De Long Wine Company; and Guillaume Jourdan, a partner at Vitabella, a PR and marketing firm in Paris who has consulted wineries on improving their labels. Since he’s foreign, I guess he’ll be our Simon Cowell. To the voting! Read more…

We’ve all seen them–wine labels that are so ugly that they make us cringe or run to the next aisle in the shop out of horror.

So right here, on this blog, we’re going to “out” the worst wine labels you’ve ever seen. Channel your inner graphic designer and post a link in the comments or send me an image of a label that has rubbed you the wrong way by next Friday. Then our panel of experts (yes, perhaps more than just me) will review them and put a list of finalists for your vote.

Send images–even bad cameraphone images such as mine above–to tyler at drvino dot com and, if necessary, say why it rubs you the wrong way.