Drinking on the job

Saw this last week at our Trader Joe’s in California. Wanted to share with the rest of Briar.

image: TJs_letterpress_wine.jpg

TJs_letterpress_wine.jpg

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I’ll drink to that.

Rick

….just wondering if those labels were printed letterpress?….

deep letterpress?

I think they printed them after they were put on the bottles.

Is this this wine only sold in California cases?

It’s sold at Trader Joe’s and the labels are not letterpress printed. ;-)

Especially amusing considering the long-time (and not entirely without merit) link between pressmen and alcoholism.

Michael Hurley
Titivilus Press
Memphis, TN

A man can be driven in many directions ……
Unfortunately a public house ,watering hole or nearest bar is the first comfortable place to unwind outside of the factory door ,routine becomes habit forming .

The fact that grapes are pressed to make wine did not escape me. I have a few (now empty) bottles of 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon down in the shop that are there simply because they have label art that was created at Hatch Show Print. The brand was The Show, and it was bottled by Rebel Wine, St. Helena, CA.

I guess a trip down to the local Trader Joe’s is now in order to pick up several bottles of Presswork.

I will be hosting a visit and pot-luck lunch for the Print Club from the Des Moines Art Center in late April, I will probably have to uncork a few bottles for that occassion.

This upcoming visit is what finally pushed me to get the shop cleaned up and organized. Things had piled-up for decades and I thought it would take a week to get the job done. It took FIVE weeks!!!!! Maybe I’ll have a bottle this weekend to celebrate that feat.

Rick

I’ve recently picked up a few bottles of these myself! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the label :)

What about the wine? Does it taste good? Inky flavor?

There’s also a Cabernet Sauvignon version with slightly fancier label (thermography, off-white paper, red rubrication).

Picked up a bottle yesterday.

It might’ve been more fitting to use a picture of the common press (allegedly based on the one made for pressing wine) but this “Favorite” jobber sure is sporting.

For our wedding we soaked off the original labels on many crates of wine (we had bathtubs of bottles soaking) and stuck on the ones we had printed. It was only after the wedding that we realised that we would not be able to take advantage of the wine merchant’s offer to return unopened bottles … so we we obliged to drink the remaining unopened bottles - life can be hard sometimes (hic! burp!) …

The printing house I was apprenticed to was established in the late 1800’s and their original indenture paper’s expressly forbade “haunting ale houses”.
Perhaps these labels illustrate the inner demons that provoked their prohibition! Incidentally, I live an hours drive from the Barossa Valley. I’m a-goin hunting!

The verbage of indenture papers was largely standardised from the earliest survivung papers around 1600 until well into the mid twentieth century. Clauses were invariably included undertaking not to frequent ale houses, gambling with dice and cards, revealing the employer’s trade secrets, etc.

We printed a batch of indenture papers about twenty years ago.

Since the holidays are fast approaching, I probably should update this thread.
The Presswork wines are still available at Trader Joes in a selection of varieties.

But “relatively” new and not mentioned here is Letterpress Distilling L.L.C. in the Seattle, WA area that bottles Letterpress V (a vodka) as well as Letterpress l (a limoncello - and yummy!!!!!!). Don’t know where it is marketed - I get my bottles from a sister-in-law in the Seattle area.

Rick

My father told me when he was an apprentice they would work half days on Saturday for overtime. The job of the apprentice was to make sure the beer pails of the Linotype
operators never ran dry.