Damien Hirst designs wine label for Comic Relief

The former wild man of British art, Damien Hirst, has designed an exclusive label for two new wines to help raise money for Comic Relief.

The Bristol-born veteran ‘Young British Artist’, who shot to international fame in 1991 with The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark pickled in formaldehyde, has put his talent to creating a wine label for the charity.

The wines, featuring Hirst’s signature dot motif, could become something of a collectors’ item given the artist’s profile – Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull, For the Love of God, sold for £50 million in August last year.

Red nose Red Pinotage Shiraz 2008 and Red nose White Chenin Blanc 2008 will retail at £4.99 a bottle. £1 from each bottle sold will be donated to Comic Relief.

Produced by SAAM Mountain Vineyards in the South African region of Paarl, the wines were chosen for the project by Jancis Robinson MW and Tim Atkin MW, whose tasting notes appear on the back.

SAAM, meaning together in Afrikaans, is a new venture that unites forty South African growers who manage wineries from Paarl to the Durbanville Hills.

The wines go on sale throughout the UK on 1 February.

Written by Erica Loi