Why Is There A Lightning Bolt In The Centralas Logo?

1. “Lightning? I thought those were the roots of a grapevine.” Yep, we like that confusion. Centralas is about connection – rooting the wine experience in agriculture, and connecting people to it and to each other. The lightning bolt connects the sky to the land - where everything that we do begins. The lightning reminds us to stay, um, grounded.

2. Lightning in a bottle. We hope to catch it with our wine.

3. When there’s lightning, there is usually rain. We seem to always need more of that in California, so we enshrined this rain prayer in our logo.

4. The French word for lightning is “foudre” which is also the name for the largest oak vessels used to store and age wine (don’t ask me why). These foudre are traditionally used in Bandol, a region in France designated for making wine from Mourvedre, one of our favorite varieties. We hope to someday make enough wine to fill a foudre.

5. We also love the French term “coup de foudre” which means a sudden and unexpected event that blows your mind, most often used in relation to love at first sight. Similar to the English term “thunderstruck” but more specific to that feeling of having your life overthrown by love. We want you to have that experience when you drink Centralas wines.

For so many reasons, lightning is the perfect symbol for Centralas wine.

6. Very old legends tell us that mushrooms are created by lightning strikes. A great time to go foraging for mushrooms is after a thunderstorm, so maybe there’s something to the legends. Fungi are a hugely important part of growing healthy grapevines, both negatively and positively. We are just beginning to learn how mycorrhizal fungi in the soil are necessary to growing the highest quality wines, while viticulture for the last century has focused on destroying fungi in the vineyard because of things like powdery & downey mildew and bunch rot. We are trying to promote an approach to viticulture that is probiotic, allowing natural vine resistance in cooperation with bacterial and fungal competitors of the unwanted fungi to provide balance, rather than attempting fungal genocide and polluting the earth with hazardous chemical fungicides. So… lightning = pro-mushroom.

7. We live in Los Angeles, where there is almost never lightning. The mild weather here is lovely, but we miss storms, extreme seasonal changes… you know, REAL weather. So our lightning bolt gives us a tiny reminder of things that we miss, like photos of our family & friends who live in other parts of the world.

8. Climate change. This year, 2020, the normal summer drought in the western US was interrupted by lightning storms. Lightning strikes during the very hot and dry late summer (and some usual human thoughtlessness) caused some of the largest, longest burning fires in history. Weather extremes, and the devastation that can follow, are getting worse as the world mean temperatures and CO2 levels rise. Some may debate whether these changes are caused by humans, but our ability to reduce pollution and CO2 in the atmosphere by regenerative, no-till, organic agriculture is not debatable. The lightning reminds us of our purpose to promote this kind of agriculture through Centralas.

9. We chose to celebrate a natural phenomenon because we want our wine to be a natural phenomenon. Of course winemaking of any kind is part of human culture, but the lightning reminds us to put the emphasis on letting nature – in all its wildness – guide the process and shine through in the wine.

10. Violent storms are terrifying, but also thrilling. They remind us how small we are, and that nature has the final say. The lightning reminds us to approach our time here with this sense of humility and respect for the earth.  

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