Triangulate Toward Blueberry Cobbler
TASTING NOTES: “Rich, dark and enticing. Flavors of lush blueberry, plumbs, and blackberry cobbler. Finish is smooth, long, and juicy.” (AbV 14.5%)
VARIETALS: Zinfandel (80%), Sangiovese (20%)
BARRELS: 10% New French & American Oak
PAIRS WITH: N/A
THAT REMINDS ME OF: The 400-year-old copperplate engravings on this label — the source artwork for the “faceless hero” — originally appeared in Pia Desideria, a 1624 emblem book by the Belgian poet Herman Hugo.
Emblem books were a genuinely strange art form that flourished in Europe between roughly 1530 and 1700. The concept was simple: pair an engraving with a motto and a poem, and let the three elements bounce meaning off each other until something spiritual shook loose. Think of it as the baroque era’s attempt at a TED talk, except instead of a guy in a fleece vest telling you about vulnerability, you got a cherub weeping into a river while a Latin epigram explained what grief is for. They were enormously popular. Collectors obsessed over them. Theologians argued about them. Poets plagiarized them shamelessly.
What’s funny is that the emblem book’s whole appeal was its layered opacity — the image meant one thing, the motto another, the poem a third, and the reader was supposed to triangulate toward wisdom. It was a puzzle dressed up as devotion. Which, when you think about it, is exactly the energy of a faceless hero on a wine label. You’re not told who the figure is. You’re not given a name or a backstory. You supply those yourself. Herman Hugo would probably appreciate that his engravings found a second life doing the same oblique work they always did — just now with blueberry cobbler on the finish.
