Wine Snobs, Don’t Let a Cute Critter on the Label Come Between You and a Great Bottle
For a couple of decades now, oenophiles have turned up their noses at the many ‘critter wines’ that followed in the wake of a certain Aussie label and its colourful wallaby. Time to reconsider.
4 min
A wine with an animal on its label is often regarded as less-than-serious, meant to appeal more to pet lovers than oenophiles.
“Animals give consumers vibes of cheapness,” observed Jeffrey Wolfe, proprietor of Wolfe’s Wine Shoppe in Coral Gables, Fla. Blame it on Yellow Tail, that cheap Aussie wine with the cheerful wallaby logo. Yellow Tail spawned a veritable den of “critter wines” two decades ago, and few left an enduring impression of quality.
I thought about all of that recently when I went looking for a wine with a horse on its label. I’d written a biography of Marguerite Henry, the author of “Misty of Chincoteague” among other horse books for children, and wanted to serve “horse wines” at my book signings. As it happened, I turned up several good bottles. Perhaps other good wines were hiding behind pictures of sheep, lions or bears?
I found a number of bottles whose labels were inspired by the animals that roam the landscapes where the wines were produced. For example, the mascot on the label of the 2022 Black Cabra Malbec ($US10)—a wine marked by soft tannins and notes of red fruit and spice—pays homage to the black goat that wanders the Argentine Andes, the location of the winery and vineyards. It’s a great-value red from winemaker Fabian Valenzuela and vineyard manager Carlos Correas of Bodega Zolo.
The solo sheep on the label of the dry, refreshingly light 2023 Landhaus Mayer Grüner Veltliner ($US12) nods to a long association between sheep and viticulture in the Weinviertel region of Lower Austria. According to Paul Kiefer, sales director of Mayer am Pfarrplatz winery and its label Landhaus Mayer, sheep historically grazed between the grapevines planted both outside and within city limits in the region. “Maximising space for agriculture and viticulture was key,” Kiefer said. Adorably, sheep can still be found in vineyards there today.
For the label of the 2020 Roberto Henríquez Tierra de Pumas Bio Bío Valley País ($US20), winemaker Roberto Henríquez chose two pumas, an endangered species in the Nahuelbuta Mountain Range, near his winery in the Bio Bío valley of Chile. The wine itself is a soft, slightly funky, intriguingly earthy, low-alcohol red made from Pais grapes harvested from old vines.
The Catalan donkeys on the label of the 2021 Clos dels Guaràns VI Negre “Les Someres” ($20) may be whimsically depicted wearing dainty frocks, but their breed is likewise endangered. In this blend of red grapes from Catalonia’s Penedès region, winemaker Jordi Raventos has produced a pleasing low-alcohol wine marked by bright acidity and ripe fruit.
Among the wines I found with horse labels, five stood out: three rosés and two reds. Two of the rosés were produced on Long Island by vintner-equestrians. The soft, slightly fruity, Merlot-dominant 2023 Wölffer Estate Rosé ($US16) is a reliably good pink whose label features a subtle gold profile of a horse entwined with grapes. The Sagaponack winery was founded by the late Christian Wölffer, a businessman and horseman who built both a winery and a horse barn.
The juicy, slightly tart 2023 Macari Sparkling Horses Cabernet Franc Pet-Nat ($US32) sports a full-colour profile of a horse on its label. The rendering was inspired by winery operations director Gabriella Macari’s love of horses. It’s also a nod to the unofficial name of the North Fork property her grandfather purchased in the 1960s: Locals referred to it as “Horse Head Bluffs,” said Macari, after a horse-head-shaped dune that once stood at the edge of what is now their vineyard.
The 2023 The Withers El Dorado Rosé ($US22) was produced in California but inspired by the rosés of Bandol, France, according to vintner Andrew Tow, who also makes Rhone-style reds and Pinot Noirs. All of his wine labels feature a portrait of Mr. Burgess, the beloved horse of his wife and the winery’s co-owner, Kathleen Tow. Even the name of the winery is horse-oriented: The Withers is the name of the point at which a horse’s neck and back meet.
Equestrian and vintner Ernesto Catena (son of famed Malbec producer Nicolás Catena) chose colourful horses in heraldic gear to decorate the label of his delicious red-berry-fruited 2022 Padrillos Malbec Mendoza ($US10). “We pay homage to the Padrillo, a strong but sensitive creature, that is very playful, free spirited and of strong nature at the same time,” Catena explained in an email. The wine is sourced from two old-vine high-elevation Malbec vineyards and aged in used and neutral oak at his winery Finca de los Padrillos.
Adding a horse to the label of the toothsome, juicy 2022 Clos de Roilette Cuvée Christie Fleurie ($US22) was not, originally, an entirely playful move according to the winery’s importer, Kevin McKenna, of Louis Dressner Wines in New York. In the 1930s, Mr. Crozet, the then-owner of the esteemed Beaujolais estate, was irked when his wines lost their Moulin-à-Vent appellation and were assigned to the new and, as yet, far-less-prestigious Fleurie. So he struck the appellation from all his labels and emblazoned them instead with a portrait of his prized racehorse, Roilette. The estate’s current owners, the Couderts, continue to use the iconic portrait, though they’ve added the Fleurie name, which has gained esteem in the intervening decades.
An amphibious label I’ve loved for a long time, Frog’s Leap is in a league of its own. Launched in 1981—“long before the arrival of ‘critter wines,’ ” founder John Williams noted—this Napa winery has long produced affordable, delicious wines. Its tangy 2023 Frog’s Leap Sauvignon Blanc Rutherford ($US24) is no exception. Williams described the origin of the name thusly: “a drunken contraction of Stag’s Leap [Wine Cellars], where I spent my formative years as their first winemaker, and the Frog Farm, the beloved home of Larry Turley, my co-founder.” Label artist Charles House took the name as a jumping-off point to create his now-famous leaping frog.
Surprisingly, one species that proved scarce in my search for animals on wine labels was man’s best friend. I looked high and low but found only one (not-so-great) wine whose label featured a dog. As the owner of two Pembroke Welsh corgis, I’d hoped to find a good wine-canine combo. If anyone finds a bottle with a corgi on the label, please let me know.
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Artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever to build a business without building a team. As AI takes over coding, customer support, marketing, administration, and other day-to-day tasks, a growing number of solo founders are scaling startups to millions in revenue with few—or even no—employees. While the trend is lowering barriers to entrepreneurship, it is also reshaping hiring, raising questions about the future of work and how businesses will grow in the AI era.
5 min
Ben Broca launched a company last December that offers AI tools to entrepreneurs. He’s already added 10,000 paying customers and is on track to bring in $10 million in revenue this year.
One thing he hasn’t added: any other employees.
The 40-year-old is part of a class of entrepreneurs who are launching, and then often running, new companies on their own. Artificial intelligence tools answer Broca’s emails, help write and debug code, field requests from customers, sign up new subscribers and grant refunds when issues arise.
Broca relishes his ability to make whatever decisions he wants on his own, often from his sun-drenched Sausalito, Calif., living room. “I think compromises make lukewarm results,” he said.
Once upon a time, running a business of a certain size required a team. AI is turning that assumption upside down, and more aspiring entrepreneurs are going it alone.
An analysis by the payments company Stripe shows there are thousands of solo operators on the company’s platform that are generating over $1 million in revenue, with their ranks doubling between 2023 and 2025. The number of solo operators crossing the $10 million threshold nearly tripled in that same span.
In the past, people without business contacts or particular savvy might not have known how to get their ideas off the ground, said Ernie Tedeschi, Stripe’s chief economist. “Now, AI can be a built-in business partner,” he said.
AI’s ability to handle various administrative tasks makes it potentially useful for launching solo businesses in many fields. But the technology’s ability to also handle key tasks in tech, like coding, make that field a particular hot spot.
Analyzing Census Bureau data, Bank of America Institute economist Taylor Bowley found that among all industries, new business applications in the information sector have seen the biggest percentage increase—nearly 45%—over the past year. At the same time, the rate of information-sector applicants saying they plan to hire workers has experienced the sharpest decline of any measured industry.
This Census dataset doesn’t track solo-operated businesses. But the numbers broadly show—in tech and beyond—that applications are flat among businesses likely to hire workers, but generally rising elsewhere. Economists say that’s a strong sign that solo operators are on the upswing.
“The bar for getting started has never been lower,” said Julian Weisser, who runs a San Francisco-based accelerator for solo founders working in tech. The accelerator—which offers founders seed money and mentorship in exchange for an equity stake—attracted 4,500 applicants for 10 slots made available in its most recent cycle, nearly five times the number it drew when it launched last May.
Going it alone with AI can still be surprisingly expensive. Broca said he was losing money on many customers’ accounts while paying to access Anthropic’s Claude to run his clients’ requests—that AI company, as well as others, charges based on usage. He has since switched to free open-source AI models from China.
Broca said he has raised $30 million from investors and, at the same time, has saved millions in salary since he hasn’t needed a team of software engineers.
Another risk: If it’s easy for one entrepreneur to launch an AI-assisted business, copying them can be easy, too. This creates anxiety for founders like Troy Johnston, who runs an AI-assisted business alone in Orlando, Fla.
“Everybody has the sword and we all have the ability to unsheathe Excalibur now,” said Johnston, 40, who used AI to code an app that helps people get the most out of credit card benefits. The company makes around $3,000 a month in profit, with no employees, and is continuing to grow.
What one-person businesses will mean for the labor market remains to be seen. Polling has shown Americans are worried that AI will replace jobs, and top economists are wrestling with that possibility, too. But AI is also creating lots of new jobs, and the go-it-alone entrepreneurs show how the technology can both open doors and limit employment opportunities.
“If everyone’s hiring less, but you get four times more firms, what does that do to head count?” said Rembrand Koning, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies entrepreneurship. He co-authored a recent study that found that among 50,000 startups the researchers examined, those focused on AI tended to operate with 25% fewer employees.
Koning also believes a soft hiring environment that’s left some people mired in long job searches has encouraged more to try their hand at launching businesses.
Some founders cite different motives. “It’s a perfect storm of post-pandemic burnout and a re-evaluation of one’s priorities, and also booming AI and a sense of what’s possible,” said Samir Ahmad, 39, who lives in Breinigsville, Pa.
Two years ago, Ahmad decided to leave the corporate job he had worked at Verizon for almost two decades to start a solo coaching and consulting business. He had been seeing social-media posts touting the ease and virtues of AI, which he used to chart a business plan and help with marketing. “It was like my chief of staff, a second in command,” he said.
The business ultimately petered out within months, though, and Ahmad is now back to a full-time corporate role with a utility company.
For Claire Vo, 41, AI helped her turn a passing impulse into a business. She was working full-time as a tech executive when she tapped AI in late 2023 to help code an app that would help her manage documentation and design for new products, with customers ranging from financial services to healthcare firms.
“I was copying and pasting from ChatGPT,” said Vo, who lives in San Francisco.
She put the app online for $1 a month, and within weeks people downloaded it thousands of times. Nearly three years later, Vo’s company—which she ran solo for nine months before hiring an engineer—now has 100,000 users and is on track to make seven figures in profit this year. AI handles the company’s marketing, sales and customer support.
While AI is a shortcut, Vo said her network and credibility in the industry were key. “I think people over-index on how easy AI is and under-index on how much I did to get to this point,” she said.
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When the Writers Festival was called off and the skies refused to clear, one weekend away turned into a rare lesson in slowing down, ice baths included.
