If there’s one thing we take as serious as growing grapes and making wine, it’s making sure the bottles are wrapped in beautiful and memorable labels! We spend a great deal of time brainstorming, discussing (debating), and working and re-working to get a label finished and on the bottle. Ever wonder exactly how that works? Good news! You’ve come to the right place. It all starts with our artists.

Mom - Beth Dale (Chief Artist)

Mom is pictured on the far right in the first picture above, and the second shows a number of hand-made label drawings. Step 1 involves all of us brainstorming label ideas to go with a new wine or to start a new label series. Mom then creates the pictures on paper with colored pencil or watercolor.

Mom has painted or drawn over 15 different label designs so far!

2. Katy Dale (Lead Digital Design/Govt Approvals/Label Company Liaison)

Once we have the image we like for a label, it’s up to Katy to “build” the label digitally, get approval from the federal and state governments to legally use the label, and work with the label printing company to get the finished product.

3. Guest Artist (Silver Sinnott)

Our cousin (and neighbor!), Silver, collaborated with Katy in 2020 to create a few more labels for us. Like working with our mom, it was really special for us to work with our cousin on a few new label designs.

a. Norton/Chambourcin 2020 labels: Our dry red wines have been updated with an estate stock quality paper and raised ink finish. Silver and Katy went back and forth for weeks to get the look and feel we wanted. Our goal was a simple yet “classy” look for our dry reds that captured our agriculture-production-retail estate operation. We are incredibly pleased with how these turned out! Please note, these two do need to age, so the 2020 reds shown below will not be released until at least 2022. Good things come to those who wait, especially with wine!

b. Vignoles 2020: This label came about through the announcement of a new Label Competition as part of the 2021 Missouri Wine Competition. There are multiple categories, one of which is “Modern or Abstract”. We essentially said, “Hey, Silver, please make us a label that captures the essence of Vignoles.. and it has to be abstract”. We think she did an excellent job as this picture invokes a feeling of yellow fruit flavor bursting out of the bottle. But hey, it’s abstract and there’s no right answer. Maybe you see a giraffe. The Vignoles is available at the winery now.

4. The Finished Product

If you look closely on each label that mom drew, you can find “BD” hidden somewhere in the picture. Making it with our own hands and very much in the family, just how we like it. This team effort is another of the things we love about our process. Here are a few links if you’d like to dig deeper, including the complete story on our website and a short article where Missouri Wine featured the story of our labels

5. Jesse and Asher

We appreciate you reading all the way to the end of this and hope you noticed that the Brothers Dale may not actually draw or do anything in the label creation process, but we sure know how to show up for the pictures.

Meet the Artists and Their Labels