This is Dianne with her daughter Ruth West, who is the model for the lovely lady in the Müller Thurgau and Madeleine Angevine images. (Photo taken on a cold winter day so we're all huddled in thick jackets, by MikeL - 12-Dec-2006.) (full size image 421Kb .jpg)

And this is Dianne with her other daughter Mary, who is the model for the lovely lady in the Melon de Bourgogne image. (Again, photo taken on a cold winter day so we're all huddled in thick jackets, by MikeL - 09-Feb-2009.) (full size image 408Kb .jpg)

The artworks were each done entirely by Dianne. The bordering, choice of fonts and wording that reduce the beauty of the overall work were done entirely by Mike Lempriere -- apologies for my lack of artistic sensitivity. All the originals are on display in our humble winery -- please come visit us to see them.

Below are the pieces and their stories, in the order they were created.

Müller Thurgau
Commissioned in 2006 for our dry white wine made from 100% Muller Thurgau grapes.
First used on the vintage 2005 release.
Copyright © 2006 Perennial Vintners.

I asked Dianne to use our vineyard as the basis of an image for the label and left it pretty much at that. The final piece was simply a more thorough version of her initial piece -- although I didn't really know what I wanted, she found it!

Madeleine Angevine
Commissioned in 2008 for our dry white 100% Madeleine Angevine grape wine.
First used on the vintage 2007 release.
Copyright © 2008 Perennial Vintners.

Upon finishing our second wine, I asked Dianne for another work in the style established with the first piece both artistically and thematically. With a little back-and-forth on the lovely lady (I felt she had to have longer hair), we arrived fairly directly at this image.

Ichigo
Commissioned in 2008 for our strawberry port-style dessert wine.
First used on the 2008 release.
Copyright © 2008 Perennial Vintners.

"Ichigo" is the Japanese word for strawberry -- with this release we honored the Japanese/American strawberry farming heritage of Bainbridge Island. As the wine is packaged in a narrow 500mL bottle (click link above to see bottle photo), there was very little room for detailed artwork. These constraints brought Dianne to do this simple Sumi-styled strawberry.

Frambelle
Commissioned in 2008 for our raspberry port-style dessert wines.
First used on the 2008 release.
Copyright © 2008 Perennial Vintners.

This is a small bottle (same as Ichigo above) with very limited space for artwork. "frambelle" is a made-up word combining the French words for raspberry (framboise) and beautiful (belle). I told Dianne about the wine and she provided exactly what was needed, a beautiful cluster of raspberries.

Melon de Bourgogne
Commissioned in 2008 for our dry white 100% Melon de Bourgogne grape wine.
First used on the vintage 2008 release.
Copyright © 2008 Perennial Vintners.

Our third white table wine was a longer time in coming as we had to start by planting a vineyard, growing the grapes for 4 years, then making the wine for a year... Dianne and I agreed that we should continue with our "girl in the vineyard" theme. Dianne looked through the PV website, and found a photo I had made a year or so earlier of our vineyard, and she based this piece on that. I was thrilled as I recognized the basis of the image immediately as being my vineyard! As requested, she made the bare winter scene into a much more attractive harvest scene.

Verjus
Commissioned in 2009 for our verjus (unfermented tart grape juice used for cooking).
First used on the 2009 release. (There was a previous release in 2008 that had a text-only label.)
Copyright © 2009 Perennial Vintners.

This is a small bottle (same a Ichigo above) with very limited space for artwork. In the same vein as the Frambelle (above), Dianne provided a cluster of grapes just as they look when ready for use in verjus.