Roll that around on your tongue and taste it. It's the new name from the vintners formerly known as Rattlesnake Creek.
“It's a combination of the letters of both of our last names,” said Andy Sponseller, who owns the 21-acre winery in the upper Rattlesnake Creek neighborhood with his partner, Connie Poten.
Prior use carries a lot of weight in trademark disputes. That's one reason why Missoula trademark attorney Shane Vannatta advised Poten and Sponseller to yield and change to a new, undisputed name.
Under a tentative agreement with Portteus, the couple has a year to sell the remaining boxes of wine with the Rattlesnake Creek brand. They'll sell the old and move on. Already, they have begun printing corks and labels with the new name.
“That's the best business decision,” Sponseller said.
About 10 days ago, Poten and Sponseller announced a contest: Whoever supplied a new name would receive a case of wine every year for the rest of their life.
More than 1,000 submissions came by e-mail and telephone. On Friday, Sponseller and Poten hosted a party to sift through the piles. The group whittled, discarded and reduced, argued and voted and voted again.
One of Poten's favorite ideas was Salish Crossing.
“We don't want to appropriate the Salish name, but we are smack in the middle of the Salish crossing,” Poten said. For thousands of years Salish people crossed to the Blackfoot Valley from the Rattlesnake using a trail that traversed the ridge to the north of Mount Jumbo.
“We got lots of crossing names, which is lovely, but we decided to go quirky,” Poten said.
Quirky came in spades.
Consider Twitchy Litigator Wine, Snake Bit Lawyer Red and Missing Lynx Beaujolais.
Here is a wordy one, submitted by a longtime Rattlesnake resident: Enjoy a Wine Without a Name. You name it. We can't.
Sponseller laughed at that one.
But he wanted a name that fit the Exxon model: meaningless, memorable and short, preferably two syllables. Trademark lawyers describe the best names as arbitrary, fanciful and suggestive.
Think of Kinko's, Hertz, Visa and PayPal - all of them whimsical, capricious names.
But fully fanciful names are hard to produce and sometimes seem too strange before a brand has given them meaning.
Maybe that's why less whimsical names such as Stone's Throw seemed so good. The upper Rattlesnake is full of rocks, and the winery sits but a short distance from the creek.
“That was a favorite until we got shot down,” Sponseller said. The name is in use by two wineries, one in Wisconsin and the other in California.
Other similar names included Wild Gate, Twisted Creek and Two Lane Road. Another favorite was Glacial Tilt.
One woman, named Montana Rafferty Moss, offered her name - Montana Moss. Another idea was Coyote Run.
“We've got tons of coyotes up here,” Sponseller said.
But a quick online check of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealed Coyote Run was taken.
“That would have been great,” Sponseller said.
Another popular name was Rocky Patch.
But that was a bit too much of a mouthful, Sponseller said.
Many of the names involved the word rattlesnake. That wouldn't work, because Sponseller and Poten agreed with Portteus that they wouldn't use any part of the word. Geographic names were no good either - too hard to trademark.
A few good submissions involved anagrams of Rattlesnake Creek, such as Starlet Cane Vineyard, from someone in the Seattle area.
Some names didn't have the heft to carry a winery but were perfect for a wine. Among them were Elk Ridge and Mumbo Jumbo.
As for the fate of all the submissions, Poten plans to make a scrapbook and keep them forever, she said.
“We've got a list of 30 names for wines. Anybody's name that we use will get a case,” Poten said.
“We got killer, quirky names,” Sponseller added. “We'll never have to think of names again.”
The winning idea came from Frederik Kreutzer of Denmark. The most distant submission came from Germany.
Poten has already begun to check into the cost of shipping a case of Ten Spoons wine to Denmark. The first batch will be a beaujolais that will, if federal approval for the new wine label comes through, be available by Valentine's Day.
But Poten hopes the prize-wine won't take a regular trans-Atlantic route.
“We're hoping the state of Montana will slip it into a diplomatic pouch,” she said with a laugh.
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