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Slideshow
Top 10 wine and spirits tattoos
From the Bacardi bat and The Kraken squid to the Ravenswood emblem via a rather dodgy tribute to the German village of Assmannshausen, we round up the top 10 wine and spirits tattoos.
Sporting a better wine or spirits design?
Send a picture of your ink to: info@thedrinksbusiness.com and we’ll include it in our next Week in Pictures round up.
1. New Yorker Daniel Sobolevskiy’s love of revered Pomerol estate Pétrus runs so deep, he had the label, featuring Saint Peter holding the key to the city of Rome, tattooed on his upper arm in 2008.
Frederic Lospied, communications director for owners JP Moueix welcomed the move, saying at the time: “It’s a very original thing to do, bravo the tattooist!” The design took three weeks to complete in a Brooklyn tattoo parlour.
2: Sailor Jerry rum’s signature hula girl is a popular tattoo choice. The rum itself is named after Norman Keith Collins, a prominent Californian tattoo artists known for tattooing sailors, hence the nickname Sailor Jerry.
Collins sailed the Pacific Ocean before settling in Hawaii. In between inking drunken sailors, he worked as a licensed skipper of a large schooner conducting tours of the Hawaiian islands.
3: Founder of Ravenswood winery in California’s Sonoma Joel Peterson promises free tastings for life at the cellar door for anyone who rocks up with a tattoo of the Ravenswood logo featuring a trio of intertwining ravens.
Peterson named his winery Ravenswood after an experience during his first harvest in 1976, when, as he worked doggedly one night to bring in four tons of grapes before a looming thunderstorm hit, he looked up to the sky to find three ravens watching him in the branches above.
4: Now the largest privately owned spirits company in the world comprising more than 200 brands and labels, Bacardi’s origins were refreshingly humble.
Founded in Cuba in 1862, the company gets its signature bat logo – seen gracing this guy’s back, in homage to the fruit bats that lived in the rafters of the first Bacardi distillery in Santiago de Cuba, bought by Spanish-born founder Facundo Bacardí Massó in 1862.
5: The fourth annual Summer of Riesling event kicked off this week celebrating all things relating to the aromatic white grape from the Rhine.
The brainchild of acid hound Paul Grieco, who runs Terroir, a mini chain of wine bars in New York, the event will see the much misunderstood wine on pour in over 500 restaurants throughout the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, alongside Riesling-themed concerts and free Riesling temporary tattoos (like these).
Riesling pioneer Dr. Loosen’s operations manager Clifford Robben loved his tattoo so much, he decided to make it permanent.
6: The Kraken rum, designed by Stranger & Stranger, comes housed in a Victorian flagon-style bottle with glass loop handles and the now iconic monstrous octopus swimming up the left side of the bottle. Since its launch, designer of the bottle Kevin Shaw has been inundated with requests for the original squid design from people wanting it as a tattoo.
The Kraken website even has an online store where you can buy Kraken shower curtains, wallpaper, lamps and Eau de Kraken perfume. Kraken are giant mythical sea monsters said to dwell off the coasts of Norway and Greenland.
7: After quirky actor Johnny Depp and elfin actress Winona Ryder called off their engagement in 1993, rather than have his “Winona Forever” tattoo removed, the canny Depp decided to simply remove the “n” and the “a” of Winona so the scroll tattoo read “Wino Forever”.
Known for his love of French wine, Depp, who recently split from French actress Vanessa Paradis with whom he has two children, Lily-Rose (13) and Jack (10), owns a vineyard near his villa in Plan-de-la-Tour in Provence.
8: The signature pirate splashed across bottles of Diageo-owned Captain Morgan rum has inspired a series of spin-off tattoos, such as this provocatively placed one. The Jamaican rum is named after 17th century Welsh privateer of the Caribbean Sir Henry Morgan, and runs with the slogan: “To Life, Love and Loot.” Captain Morgan is the second largest spirits brand in the US and the seventh largest worldwide by volume.
9: The iconic label of the world’s best-selling whiskey, Jack Daniel’s, founded in Lynchburg, Tennessee, in 1875 by Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel, has weaved its way onto many an arm and leg (as seen here).
Ironically, JD’s home county of Moore is dry, so the famous whiskey is unable to be sold in bars and restaurants in the city where it’s made, though the distillery does flog commemorative bottles.
The signature black label was introduced after Jack Daniel’s death in 1911 as a tribute to the founder. Legend has it, only he knew the truth behind the meaning of Old No. 7.
10: And finally… we seriously hope this tattoo, inked in homage to the humorously-titled village in the Rheingau, is temporary, or this guy looks set to be the butt of cruel jokes. The village of Assmanshausen, which boasts a lithium spring, is famed for its Pinot Noir, or Spätburgunder as they call it in Germany.