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Monday, July 11, 2011

All In The Cards

I've always been impressed by JAQK Cellars wine design since seeing it featured on dieline. I've passed by the offices in San Francisco, sadly too late to stop in. When I realized they started selling  signature playing cards I wondered how'd they look. I also wanted a taste of their quite scrumptious looking wine. I got both and was impressed by both. Design of the cards and just the bottle itself show remarkable , hhm taste.


 The cards have the style of the label and will always make you look better than the person who pulls out a dime store deck.


The bottle I got 22 Black from 2007, "It's not typical full body Cabernet Sauvigon" , spouted one of my friends who sampled many a wine. Myself I haven't had many different ones  The friends who I enjoyed  Black 22 with, one summer evening commented: very smooth , deep burgundy color, would be great with steaks or lamb, hints of light oak  all comments when we sipped the wine . "Gets all 4 stars from me" , said a friend.

What pulls you in is the extra quality and care that a company takes to brand itself to make it stand out. JAQK Cellars does that and more by having  the taste to back it up.

A part of me will be always compelled to take the extra time to enjoy the bottle just for it's look. Writing "ENJOY and Good Luck" doesn't hurt either.

I highly recommend looking through their selection online,, these are the perfect business gift or something to impress others with.

You can find JAQK's Wine locally carried in the following stores or simply check out the
 interactive map

Wally's Wines
Mission Liquors
90210 Wine & Spirits
Bottle Rock

On the note of style and cards.
Art Hustle Cards

Series Two just launched.

Art Hustle cards takes the premise of baseball cards and switches artists for baseball players. Starting off, I have to say I don't like the cheap material there made out of and I would have liked a more uniform look to the front of the cards. You get a image of the artist or art of the artist in fron and their name in a big font. I would have liked some time to take their images for the cards not just some radom image of them. On the back of the cards are some facts for every artist. Hometown, medium of choice and color make sense for art cards, but astrological sign, distinguishing marks, right or left could have been some better info. Also Motto, Quote or Creed doesn't make sense when there is a big Motto, Quote or Creed below the first one. Nicely a website of the artist is lsited at the bottom.

For art cards I excepted more, in other collectible trading cards you could create a big image from the backs of multiple cards. Art Hustle's series does feature special autographed cards. I got one from Jeff Soto and he made it as creepy as Hell, by signing it. Other featured cards are just certain pieces from artist. On the back is what medium and what was used to create them if they're from etsy. If vinyl it lists how many other of the figure were made.

Two tiny cards are included with each pack and just have small images of artists on the front with no background info on back.

I wanted more from the card series.