Black Souls

During our venture up to Big Sur, Oscar and I stopped along the central California coast to do some wine tasting, good thing, too, since we never made it up to Napa. Probably our favorite place was Red Soles Winery in Paso Robles. We did a tasting and bought a bottle of their delicious 2007 Cabernet reserve. 

While we were driving up to the place, I was speculating that the name Red Soles comes from the bottoms of your feet running red as you stomp grapes. We were asking the girl that was pouring our wine about that and she said that yes that was what the name meant. She went on to tell us the original label of the wine was two red footprints, one for each of the owner's, who are a husband and wife team. Up on the wall of the tasting room there is a painting of the original label. So one day, the husband and wife are working in the tasting room and up pulls two black SUVs and out get several very well dressed men. They come inside and much to the chagrin of the owners, they are not high class wine buyers but attorneys. From Barefoot Winery. They were there to serve a cease and desist order for copyright infringement for the Red Soles label design. This tiny little winery!! The Red Soles owner's attorney told them they could probably win the case, but it would cost a ton of cash, and Barefoot has a lot more of that than Red Soles, so they changed their label. 

So there you have it, big corporate bullies, even in the wine business.