Before the Label and the Bottle

And why we’re going back there—just for a moment.

Wine’s been around for over 8,000 years. The first records of it come from Georgia (the country, not the state), where people stored fermented grape juice in clay vessels called qvevri. No brands. No names. Just wine.

For most of human history, that’s how wine worked. It didn’t come in a bottle. It wasn’t wrapped in a label. It was passed down, traded, poured from barrels and jugs. You drank what your community made. If you liked it, you drank more. If not, you didn’t. Simple.

Back then, wine wasn’t bought in bottles. It was fetched. People brought their own containers to fill from barrels or amphorae. Even when trade expanded, wine was shipped in bulk. The English, for instance, imported Bordeaux by the barrel, bottling it only after it landed in London cellars.

Bottling at the source? That’s a 20th-century thing. Even then, bottles weren’t standardized. Shapes, sizes, and volumes varied wildly until glassblowers found their own limits. The now-iconic 750ml bottle? It exists mostly because that’s how much air one strong-lunged glassblower could exhale in a single breath.

Labels didn’t really show up until the 1900s, when glass bottles became more common. But even then, it was just a scribbled piece of parchment—something to say what the bottle was, not why it was special. The real shift came with printing presses and retail shelves.

That’s when wine became branding.

Suddenly, the label wasn’t just helpful—it was seductive. It sold a lifestyle. A personality. It told you what to think before the cork even moved. Words like “elegant,” “structured,” “exclusive.” Medals no one’s heard of. French words no one can pronounce.

And somewhere along the way, we stopped trusting our palate. We trusted the packaging instead.

So we’re stripping it back.

No front label. No fake scarcity. Just wine. Real wine. That tastes like something. From people we know. In quantities so small, you might never see it again.

We call it The First Pour.
Three bottles. 200 total bundles. Only a back label with the legal stuff—because, well, lawyers.

That’s it.

It’s our first ever unlabeled drop. Not because we’re trying to be mysterious. But because we’re not here to sell a story. We’re here to pour what’s good. And sometimes, the best way to do that… is to shut up and let the wine speak.

Drink Different. Or Die Bored.

Cheers,
Bruno