One of the things I enjoy doing when wine shopping is walking down the isles and reading all the funny names of wines and looking at the attractive labels most seem to sport these days.

Yes, taste is important, but wine really is about the whole package these days. There's just such a huge selection, it is understandable that wine makers feel they must have something else to attract your attention, to say "hey, buy me!" when you walk by their bottle. Many also turn to related merchandise to grab your attention, like these t-shirts from Fat Bastard Wines.

In this article entitled "An amusing wine," discusses this trend in wine merchandising:

Stuffy oenophiles might lift an eyebrow at some of the names. Such as Fat Bastard and Il Bastardo, Barefoot, Earthquake, Smoking Loon, Dancing Bull, Bada Bing, Royal Bitch, 7 Deadly Zins, Big Ass Chardonnay, Cats Pee on a Gooseberry Bush (a New Zealand sauvignon blanc) and Goats Do Roam, an obvious pun on the French wine Cotes du Rhone.

The graphics on many of these labels are a far cry from dull conservative black and white or gold lettering.

The label of Screw Kappa Napa, for example, says, "Life After Cork," and features a depiction of a corkscrew with wings. Obviously, it's a screwtop wine. The label of La Bomba Grande red table wine features a design of an atomic bomb exploding. It's a New Mexico wine from Los Alamos and its vintner, John Bologna, spent 42 years as a nuclear chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"Everybody's trying to stand out more than the other guy," said Ben Lazich, who has operated the Wine Seller on Prytania Street for 17 years. "Some people buy these wines just on the basis of the label alone -- and then they (the winery) have succeeded. Some of them are trash but some of them are good. I tell people the label's goofy but the wine is good -- if it's really good."