Featured image for Coppola Winery Announces Exclusive Oscars Wines with Animated Label

Coppola Winery Announces Exclusive Oscars Wines with Animated Label

by Rudy Sanchez on 02/27/2019 | 2 Minute Read

Francis Ford Coppola has been a fixture in Hollywood for four decades, earning his first Academy Award in 1969 for best original screenplay along with co-writer Edmund North for Patton. He would go on to more acclaim with The Godfather series of films, but also saw success in other ventures, including hospitality and wineries.

Of course, it’s fitting that Coppola teamed up with the Oscars for the exclusive premiere of his latest creations—The Final Cut 91st Edition Rutherford 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon and the Final Cut 91st Edition Rutherford 2016 Chardonnay. Both wines were only available to attendees of this year’s Academy Awards and the Governor's Ball.

The labels—which took five years to develop—feature a zoetrope from the director’s personal collection. Zoetropes are an animation technique that predates film, and they produce the illusion of movement using a series of still images behind slits. The viewer watches through these slits as movement causes a strobe-like effect.  Superseded by film, the technique is still used occasionally in art installations, train station ads, and vinyl records.

Editorial photograph

The labels are a natural fit for their bottle design given that Coppola’s studio is named America Zoetrope (formerly Zoetrope Studios).

“These wines are a tribute to Francis Ford Coppola’s love for film and wine,” said Coppola CEO and Chief Winemaker Corey Beck in a press release. “Francis took a risk 40 years ago and purchased a home in wine country where he started making wine. It seems only appropriate that we drew from his passion and bottled the Oscars wines with our revolutionary label that took five years to develop. Featuring a moving Zoetrope, the grapes come from Francis’s estate and the impeccable Dutton Ranch in Sonoma County, both beautiful wines to celebrate the Oscars!”

Editorial photograph

Editorial photograph

The Francis Ford Coppola Winery describes Final Cut 91st Edition Rutherford 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon as opulent, with “presence and complex character, supple tannins, and fragrant oak that frames alluring impressions of red cherry, plum, leather, tobacco, and clove. Mouth-filling and dramatic, as the wine opens up black fruits emerge with notes of vanilla and baking spices.”

The Final Cut 91st Edition Russian River Valley 2017 Chardonnay is described as “offering vibrant aromas of pineapple, melon, kumquat, and clove. Full-bodied and broad on the palate, the wine’s lush flavors of apples, lemon cream, cinnamon graham cracker, and smoky bourbon vanilla build before finding a crescendo of crisp mineral notes on the finish.” This Chardonnay is a single vineyard bottling from Dutton Hill Vineyard, located in the Russian River Valley in Sonoma County, CA, an area known for producing expressive, tropical-toned Chardonnays.