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Copyright © 2004, Dover Canyon Winery. All rights reserved. |
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Where did you get the dog on your label? The Story of ‘Blue’ |
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Friend and winery investor Ed Smith painted this surreal portrait of Blue, a white St. Bernard, in 1992. Dan’s mother gave him Blue as a Christmas present when he was 16 years old. Blue followed him everywhere, first as a big fluffy puppy, and later as a sandy, slobbering behemoth following his beloved Danny-master on the beaches of Santa Cruz, where Dan’s mother still lives, around the campus of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, and outside Mother’s Tavern, Dan’s favorite hangout in his college years.
In 1989, at the age of 10, Blue rescued Dan from a killer surf in Santa Cruz. After watching Dan’s board sweep up in the air in the rocky surf, with no sign of his master, Blue raced up and down the beach, barking frantically. Although a strong swimmer, Blue seldom ventured out into the deeper waves because saltwater bothered his ears. But today Blue threw hygiene to the storming winds and plunged through the streaming waves. Blue pulled Dan, bleeding and knocked unconscious by his own surfboard, to safety, but in the process was knocked against some jagged rocks and broke several ribs. He healed, but at his advanced age he was never quite the same.
Blue faded away in the summer of 1992, just months before Dan and Ed produced Dover Canyon’s first wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon. After drinking two bottles in celebration, Ed painted this portrait and gave it to Dan as a gift, never dreaming that it would become the hallmark of one of the finest new wineries on the horizon. |
