Back to the Future

A “new” image to celebrate Testarossa’s 15th Anniversary

At the beginning of 2008, there were 2,687 bonded wineries in California. This is nearly three times more wineries in California than when we started Testarossa in our Sunnyvale garage in 1993.   In our first fifteen years, we’ve learned that the most important part of Testarossa’s winemaking philosophy is, “if it isn’t broke….. then break it and rebuild it better.”  This philosophy means that we are never 100% satisfied with anything we do.  In all areas of the winery, everyone on our team is challenged to experiment and try new and more efficient ways to make better wine and a better experience for our customers and our staff. 

As part of breaking the mold and making things better and in anticipation of celebrating our 15th anniversary, we decided to undertake a major new image and labeling project forTestarossa.  We hired Jeffrey Caldewey, a legend among wine label and packaging designers, who is famous for designing the labels of such famous wines as Chateau Montelena, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Grgich Hills, Jordan, Groth, Chalk Hill and Beringer.   More recently he has done major new projects for Joseph Phelps, Mumm Napa and Piero Antinori in Italy.  After reviewing many design concepts from Jeffrey, we decided to pursue a sandstone colored design that showcases our 19th Century winery and which also incorporates the name of the winery through the middle of a hand drawn sketch of the buildling and hillsides. 

The name Testarossa has been split into two different colors to highlight our modernity as well that Testarossa means “redhead” (TESTA means “head” and ROSSA means “red”) in Italian, as many of you already know. This nickname was given to me while studying abroad in Italy in the 1980s. 

The finishing touch is a new “Circle-T” logo which is a modern interpretation of a
bi-lateral cordon grape vine that has been incorporated into a circle to simulate our “T”.

We look forward to everyone enjoying our “new” classic wine label design. If you look closely, the front door of the winery is always open, because we love welcoming each and everyone of you to visit us here in Los Gatos!

Thank you for being a part of our first 15 years.  We look forward to sharing this wonderful journey with all of you for the next 15 and beyond!

Cheers,

Rob & Diana Jensen
Proprietors