Vintage 1940s Small Black Brand Zinfandel Crate Label — Victor Fruit Growers, Escalon California

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Original 1940s grape crate label produced for the Small Black Zinfandel brand by Victor Fruit Growers of Escalon, California.

This label measures 13 inches × 4 inches and is a crate/lug-end band label, used on California grape lugs during the mid-20th century.

This is a New Old Stock example, unused and unmounted, with strong original color and clean edges. Stored flat.

Victor Fruit Growers operated in the northern San Joaquin Valley prior to its formal incorporation in 1951, serving independent growers who utilized Escalon’s rail access and cold‑storage facilities to ship both fresh‑market and juice‑grape varieties nationwide.

Small Black Zinfandel labels from this period are collected for their varietal specificity and representation of California’s early grape‑packing industry.

🍇 What the Label Actually Prints — and Shows

• SMALL BLACK in white letters with a heavy navy outline, on a yellow-orange unrolled-scroll banner at the left, with BRAND in small solid-black capitals directly beneath that banner. The brand as printed is SMALL BLACK.
• ZINFANDEL in olive-green letterspaced capitals on a matching scroll banner at the right — the varietal, on its own banner, not part of the brand
• REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. in small black type at the top left
• PRODUCT OF U.S.A. at the lower left
• VICTOR FRUIT GROWERS . — the full stop is set well clear of the final S, a real typographic feature of this printing
• ESCALON, CALIFORNIA — and no ZIP code, which is the older setting

The word grape or grapes is not printed anywhere; grapes appear in the artwork only. Victor Fruit Growers is the shipper of record on the sheet, and no printer is named. The design is a long narrow crate/lug-end band on a bright vermilion ground inside a cream keyline and a magenta outer border, with the two scroll banners at left and right, a centred rectangular vignette panel with a cream mat, navy inner keyline and navy corner spandrels each holding a small red dot, and stylised grapevine — dark blue-purple clusters, brown and bright-green leaves, grey-brown vine stakes — climbing the red field on both sides.