French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the events of January 7th’s terrorist attack have been the center of media attention with new details about the event emerging daily. But little known is the fact that, aside from their political imagery, three of the victims were among France’s bawdiest wine label designers, reports Wine Spectator.
Gérard Descrambe, owner of Bordeaux’s Château Barrail des Graves, first enlisted the help of the legendary cartoonists in the 1970s in an effort to garner publicity for the then failing winery after inheriting it from his father. His was one of the first organic vineyards in the region and “the only people [he] knew who were into the ecology were at Charlie Hebdo,” The rest, as they say, is history, with Hebdo’s artists contributing to the labels with “that varied from drunken to suggestive to sexually explicit humor” ever since.
“They were my friends,” says Descrambe of the cartoonists, whose drawings are featured on about half of the vineyard’s bottles. And it’s because of this great friendship, and great loss, that he plans to continue using their artwork going forward. [Wine Spectator] [Photo: Flickr/Valentina Calá]