Inspiration of a Classic Wine Label

Discover the creative forces behind the Gemello label’s unique and lasting design.

👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson, author of 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 my forthcoming memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Read the origin story of the book.) 🍇 The Centenarian Playbook is my newsletter, which features longevity tips and stories from Grandma Kay’s long life. It also includes stories of the Gemello Winery, which her late husband, Mario, ran for nearly half a century. 📖 I’m sure you’ll find my maternal grandparents are quite lovable characters.

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How a Classic Wine Label Was Born

The inspiration for the Gemello wine label is a fascinating story. It took root in Mario Gemello’s 1945 purchase of 8,000 gallons of La Questa wine, as its owners, the Rixford family, were preparing to close its wine business.

But the Gemello wine label wouldn’t take shape for another decade until my grandfather, Mario, brought on Louis Sarto as a partner to manage the Gemello Liquor Store in 1956.

“We liked [the La Questa label] very much, especially Louis Sarto,” Mario Gemello told wine historian Charles Sullivan in a 1992 interview.¹ “We loved that script, the scroll on it.”

La Questa was founded by Emmet H. Rixford in Woodside, California, in 1884. By 1900, he had turned it into one of California’s most prestigious brands, winning several awards. His sons, Halsey and Allan, took over La Questa after Emmet passed away in 1928 at age 87. 

Sullivan said La Questa replicated the script from a bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne, whose founding goes back to 1776 in France, and is still family-owned, run by a seventh generation family member.

Sullivan said he had laid a La Questa wine bottle side-by-side with a Louis Roederer Champagne bottle for comparison.

 “It’s perfect. Just the script,” Sullivan said.

But that was only part of the inspiration for the Gemello label. Mario hired Louis Sarto’s brother, Boise, to design the logo. Boise was fresh off doing creative design work for Pepsi.

“[Boise] made a lot of display and advertising [ads] for Pepsi-Cola. He was quite artist and he liked that script,” Gemello said.

Are wine labels eligible for copyright protection?

The short answer is yes, but courts have held that it requires a high degree of originality, even more so than other creative works, says Brian D. Kaider, a partner at KaiderLaw, specializing in craft beverage law and intellectual property.

This is because most of what a label contains is factual information, such as identification of contents, and expression dictated by utility, such as “refrigerate after opening,” Kaider notes in an article he wrote for Grapevine Magazine.

“The use of a color background, standard fonts and the symmetrical display of information would likely be refused copyright protection,” Kaider wrote.

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1. Sullivan, Charles, Wines & Winemakers of the Santa Cruz Mountains, An Oral History, 1992 - 1994 (D.R. Bennion Trust Fund)