I will confess that before I moved to the Pacific Northwest and started being especially interested in wines from Washington, Oregon and Idaho, I generally chose a new wine based on the label. By "label," I mean I selected wines to try based on their type choices, their kerning, the use of ligatures and design elements . . . I note that it's been my experience that serif type as the body text on a wine label is a good sign. (oops)™ wine caught my eye the first time I saw (oops)™ wine because of its typography. The bottle designs and label are all about typography. The screw cap and wrapper are a bright cerulean blue, or purple, or crimson, or green, depending on the wine, and the labels are cream, deliberately made to look like a sheet of printed newsprint wrapped around the bottle, with a matching band of color at the bottom, and lots and lots of serif type. The bottles stand out distinctively on a shelf of other wine.

All of the (oops)™ wines are built on Carmenère; by itself, or in combination with other varietals. Carmenère was, in the mid 1800s, a staple of French Bordeaux wine blends, a grape that was favored not only for its herbal-spicy qualities for the lovely deep red color of the wine. Carmenère was successfully transplanted to Chile, where, over time, it frequently grew alongside Merlot vines. But France was hard-hit in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the Root Louse, also known as phylloxera, an insect epidemic that destroyed thousands of vines in France. For a long time, Carmenère was extremely limited and even sometimes lamented as the "lost grape of Bordeaux™," a phrase that (oops)™ has trademarked.

The transplanted Carmenère vines thrived in Chile. As the (oops)™ wine bottles, and the Web site note:

Soon forgotten, the Carmenère grapes grew freely with Merlot grapes and were assumed to be Merlot until, suddenly in 1994, viticulturist Jean-Michel Boursiquit revealed the mistake. Oops!

(oops)™ is more than just an interesting brand and marketing ploy designed to sell table wine to consumers. Although they've paid considerable attention to their design and branding (I note that there's an animated Root Louse on their Web site, reading a a news paper) (oops)™ seem to be quite sincere in their desire to raise international awareness of Chile's surviving Carmenère. (oops)™ has six wines; Carmenère, Cabernet Franc/Carmenère, Merlot/Carmenère, a Sauvignon Blanc (a blend of 85% Sauvignon Blanc and 15% Carmenère) and a Chardonnay (a blend of 86% Chardonnay, and 14% "white" Carmenère). I note that there's an oops Wine Blog, though at present it seems a bit moribund. I will be seeking out (oops)™ wines; I note that I'm seeing bottles on bargain shelves, at Trader Joe's, and at the Bargain Grocery Store.