Cuvaison Chardonnay and Grapes

Cuvaison is a winery in the Los Carneros region of California’s Napa Valley. The story goes that Warhol and Cuvaison owner Alexander Tai Schmidheiny dined together in early 1980. At this dinner, the story continues, Warhol was asked for his opinion of the wine. He responded merely that the label was “lousy.” Thereafter, Schmidheiny commissioned Warhol to design a new Cuvaison label.

To begin, Warhol used his Polaroid camera to capture various configurations of grapes. From there, screenprints were created in a variety of colorways. The screenprints are referenced in the fourth edition of Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987 at FS.III.B.6 (Feldman and Schellmann 2003, 258). All are presumed to be unique in size and/or colorway.

In the Catalogue Raisonné, Feldman and Schellmann note that although the work was commissioned, it was “not used” (2003, 258). That was true until 2014, when Cuvaison, in collaboration with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, created three limited-edition box sets of wine featuring the label designs Warhol created in 1980. [1]