Arts at Bryant Estate Celebrating Creative Exchange

Our journey began with London-based artist Rachel Dein, followed by a special edition for the 10th anniversary of the BETTINA wine featuring the acclaimed American pop artist Ed Ruscha. Our second collaboration for the BETTINA label features a lyrical line drawing by New York based artist Elliott Puckette. 

This bottle of Bryant Family Vineyard Cabernet Franc pays tribute to two passions of ours: art and nature. The interior of the handcrafted walnut box features a unique impression of our vineyard botanicals by London based artist Rachel Dein. Like the unique harvest that delivered this wine, Rachel Dein's artwork captures the essence of nature in a given moment in time. With painstaking detail similar to that which has gone into creating this incredible wine, Rachel creates her molds using a process that goes back thousands of years.

This tenth anniversary presentation is a collaborative adventure - a weaving together of friendship, art, wine, and a celebration of nature.

I met the Los Angeles based American artist Ed Ruscha in the late ‘90s. An aspiring art historian, I was fascinated by his distinctive word paintings and trompe-l’oeil gunpowder drawings. Years later when I pondered an artist wine label series, Ed was always my first choice. The opportunity to collaborate with him on this project is a true honor.

When Ed presented the abstract artwork that encases this bottle, he said it reminded him of falling grapes. It invokes the dizzying cascade of grapes during gravity flow winemaking and creates an environmental backdrop that is at once tactile and celebratory. Embedding the word NOW on the label is a subtly powerful gesture.

Rather than existing as a mere piece of text, it takes on its own form and encourages us to be present and mindful.

To mark this promising vintage, we unveil our second artist collaboration, featuring a lyrical line drawing by New York based artist Elliott Puckette.

Known for her intricate style, Puckette’s artworks are reminiscent of kalligraphía (Greek for “beautiful writing”), yet her visual language is decidedly self-determined. The mesmeric, closed yet circuitous loop line invokes the rhythm of life, conveying dynamism, musicality, and resurgent vitality within its confident flowing forms. The artist’s line is a celebration which echoes what this wine means to us.

As the art critic David Anfam observed, “Line is loaded…it calls space into existence and, hence, life itself.” It is the through line of this conversation that is reflected in the BETTINA label. Each bottle has been carefully hand labelled as a letterpress work of art, a tactile melding of artistic intention.