When we reached out to Oregon winery Raptor Ridge to learn more about their bottle label designs, we received a wonderful response from Annie Shull. The label story from the winery…
When Scott Shull founded the winery, he had previously owned a truck farm producing organic veggies, herbs and honey. He playfully named his honey after the birds with whom we share our beautiful Pacific Northwest home, and the fact that during his first honey harvest, he was stung 3 times. He called it Raptor Ridge 3-sting Honey. When he started making wine, he was looking for an easy-to-remember name and catchy visual representation. He got together with his friends from the tech industry, many of them marketing minds, and they kept coming back to Raptor Ridge. Since Raptors are birds of prey, hawks, owls and kestrels, that are prevalent in our forested home and patrol our vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains it seemed suitable. This was before the Velociraptors became so famous thanks to Jurassic Park.
There are many labels out there with herons, hawks, owls, and eagles. One of our first labels sported a full rendition of a Raptor, but it seemed too busy. When we searched for a memorable icon, we distilled it down to the feather. It would stand out on a shelf, be a simple thing to trigger someone’s memory, and also a way for us to support the important work of Raptor Rescue foundations in our area. When we originally started the label, we donated to Raptor Rescue foundations to help in their efforts to rehabilitate injured birds and educate people about the importance of maintaining safe habitats for them. In return, they allowed us to work with Portland industrial photographer and outdoor enthusiast Michael Dahlstrom, who took intricate high-resolution photos of actual feathers that the centers had on file to be used to repair injured birds. It is illegal for non-indigenous folks to possess raptor feathers, and we have always been respectful of that.
Over the years, we developed more refined versions of the label, getting closer to a botanical sketchbook style we have today. Each feather has the specific genus and species name of the raptor, most of whom are local to our vicinity in the Pacific Northwest. There are different feathers on our different bottlings, at one point, we ascribed a particular feather to a specific AVA:
- Peregrine Falcon feather for all wines from the Chehalem Mountains AVA
- Red-Tailed Hawk feather for those hailing from the McMinnville AVA
- Golden Eagle feather for those vineyards from the Yamhill-Carlton AVA
- For blended wines, we typically label our Pinot Gris with the lighter, brighter Barn Owl feather
- Barrel Select sports the Cooper’s Hawk feather from vintage to vintage