Wine Posters: Topping up at The Wine Foundry

The Wine Foundry is a Napa-based winery assisting vineyard owners with all aspects of making wine from the sourcing of grapes through bottling. For the cover illustration of its yearly catalogue, also to be printed as a poster, General Manager Steve Ryan's request was very simple: "We would love to capture the stainless stills as a backdrop with maybe some winemaking action on the foreground." On my artwork, painted in gouache and pastel, holding a torch lamp and a hose, a cellar worker is "topping up a barrel".  "Topping up" (l'ouillage) is a long-established process developed by French monks in the XIIth century and still in use today: adding wine to the barrel content reduces the amount of oxygen in order to limit oxidation. I chose to show this very important operation to express Action and Precision as well as Tradition and Modernity.