(pictured: Sue & Gerry at the recent Oyster Festival at Spirit Ridge.)
When readers of the last Food & Wine Trails issue were promised “really big surprises” and urged to stay tuned, they still weren’t likely prepared for a new paper label on the latest Kraze Legz wine releases. Owners Gerry and Sue Thygesen should be forgiven if they look a little surprised, themselves. It hasn’t exactly been a cakewalk.
Just two days before the scheduled screen-printing of the Kraze Legz brand characters, news came from their bottle supplier, “no Bordeaux bottles available”.
“Our only option was to implement plan B” Gerry smiles,” The situation created a perfect opportunity for us to do some market testing by introducing a more traditional paper label.
The result was a brilliant success – a stylized horse’s head, mane flowing in the wind, with a SKAHA VINEYARD heading – a tribute to “Sue’s life long love of horses”. The industry has been quick to embrace the SKAHA brand, but that doesn’t mean Sue and Gerry are about to abandon the name and labels that have attracted so many customers to their Kaleden wine shop and branded the consistently award-winning wines.
“We’ve worked very hard to develop a great customer experience here in the winery and we can’t imagine just abandoning our 1920’s themed Kraze Legz wine names and designs,” explains Sue. “We see the SKAHA single vineyard series as an extension to our portfolio of award winning wines, one which will expand our retail demographic.”
This year’s entries into the All Canadian Wine Championships: for the new SKAHA Vineyard series, Pinot Blanc – Gold, Mystique – Silver, and unoaked Chardonnay – Bronze. Oh, and speaking of cakewalk, Kraze Legz crazy good Merlot, the 2011 Cakewalk, earned a Double Gold.
~ Lorne Eckersley