Antique Royal Crown Cherry Wine 🍒 Neck Label 1920s–30s | Rare Color Litho Gold Foil Coat of Arms

Not One Word on It, and That Is How You Know It Is the Top Label 🍒 Royal Crown Cherry au Vin Upper Neck Label

Size: 2 1/2" x 1 3/4"

Turn it over, turn it back. No brand, no maker, no town, not a single letter on either side. This little crowned oval rode at the very top of a bottle of Royal Crown Cherry au Vin, and the name lived on the label underneath it. The top one never needed to say anything. It just had to look like money.

These little guys are pretty rare. They are the upper neck labels for a very popular Cherry Wine. The lower neck labels are out there but these are rarely seen. If you have a collection grab these while I have them.

🍒 Cherry, "In Wine"

"Au vin" is French for "in wine" or "with wine", the same two words you know from coq au vin. So Royal Crown Cherry Wine, to give it its plain English name, is cherry made up on a wine base instead of on straight spirit, and it was sold as an apéritif, the little glass before supper. One Belgian label for the stuff says so right across the top: Apéritif Surfin, Cherry au Vin.

Here is the part I find fun. Every Cherry au Vin label I have come across was printed in Belgium. There is one for the Dheur distillery in Herstal, Belgium, next door to Liège, with the printer's line of Ern. Roose of Hasselt along the bottom, and there are a couple from a Brussels lithographer called Myncke. The words are French, and French is one of Belgium's own languages, so a Belgian bottle wears them without blinking. If you pinned me down on where this little crown came off a bottling line, I would say Belgium.

🍷 Why Anybody Would Put Cherries in Wine

On August 29, 1919 Belgium passed what everybody still calls the Vandervelde Law, after Emile Vandervelde, the socialist Minister of Justice who pushed it through. It banned spirits anywhere open to the public: cafés, hotels, railway stations, the lot. You could still buy spirits to take home, but never less than two liters at a time, and the duty on distilled drink was quadrupled on top, on the theory that a working man could not afford that much at once.

Beer and wine were left alone. Anything fermented that came in at 18 degrees or under could be sold as freely as before. The jenever distillers, who had already been moving into sweet liqueurs and elixirs, took a second hit, and the drinks that gained ground were the lower-strength apéritifs, quinquina wine and the like. The way I read it, a cherry apéritif made on wine was made for exactly that world: something sweet, red and grown-up that a café could still pour across the counter, as long as it stayed under the line.

And the old stories about that law are half the fun. The way it is told in Belgium, a great many "wittekes", little glasses of white jenever, still got handed to customers from under the bar. The stills went underground too, into milk churns, coppers and cooking pots, up in the attic or out in the henhouse. The law stayed on the books for more than sixty years and was finally scrapped on January 1, 1984.

👑 The Crown and the Shield

The crown on top is the one part of the design that says its name out loud. Under it is a proper heraldic shield, split in two down the middle, which heralds call per pale. The bars are on the dexter half and the three stars on the sinister half. Dexter is the shield-bearer's right, so to you, looking at it, the bars sit on the left and the stars on the right. A white sprig curves up on either side.

Two little details tell you whoever drew it was not thinking like an English or French herald. The stars have six points, which is how German and Scandinavian heraldry draws a star by default; an English or French one gets five unless the blazon says otherwise. And black stars sitting on red break the old rule of tincture, color on color. British and French heralds were so strict about that rule that arms breaking it got a name, armes à enquérir, arms that make you stop and ask how they came about. In Central and Eastern Europe, black on a color was never such a sin.

I have never matched these arms to a real family or a real town, and I suspect a label artist put them together to look noble, the way plenty of drinks labels did. For a bottle called Royal Crown that is no mark against it. The crown did the selling.

✨ Real Gold Foil on a Two-Inch Label

It is color lithography, and the beaded rule round the field and the edge of the shield are laid in real gold foil, not printed yellow. Tip it under a lamp and the gold flashes. Somebody paid extra to put metal on a label this small, for the top of a cherry apéritif, and I think that is wonderful.

🏷️ Top Label, Bottom Label

A bottle like this wore two labels on the neck. The lower one carried the words, Royal Crown and Cherry au Vin. The upper one, this one, sat higher up the taper and was pure dress. The lowers turn up from time to time. The uppers almost never do.

Label-collector lore has it that the top ones were printed in smaller runs, that some bottlers saved them for gift and holiday bottles, and that the ones that did go on were the first thing a hand touched pulling the cork, so they were the first to tear and go in the bin. Whatever the reason, the little crowned top piece is the one that got away.

🔎 Condition

New Old Stock. These were never put on a bottle, there is no glue on the back, and the foil is still bright.

🖼️ Living With It

It is small, so give it room. A deep mat in cream or black lets the oval float, and a black mat makes the foil jump. It looks great in a multi-opening frame with other old drinks labels, where one oval among the rectangles gives the whole thing a rhythm. Light it from the side to wake the gold up. For an album, an acid-free page or a polyester sleeve; on a wall, UV-filtering glass and out of direct sun. Bar, kitchen, dining room, or a collector's binder, it earns its spot.

❓ Questions I Get About These

Is there any writing on it at all?

None. Apart from a pin-head pale mark beside the point of the shield, far too small to read, the front is all design, and the back is plain paper. The name comes from the lower neck label that went on the same bottle.

What is Cherry au Vin?

Cherry on a wine base, sold as an apéritif. "Au vin" means in wine. In Belgium after 1919 a wine-based drink like that, kept to 18 degrees or under, could still be served in a café when spirits could not.

How old is it?

I date these to the 1920s and 1930s from the printing and the paper: a die-cut oval, color lithography and gold foil, never used. That makes it a true antique.

Why are the top labels harder to find than the bottom ones?

Smaller, higher on the neck, nobody's idea of the "real" label, and first in line to get torn off. Most went out with the empty bottle.