Judges Announced For The

Judges Announced for Hudson Valley Wine Magazine's "The Face of Hudson Valley Wine" Label Competition

Hudson Valley Wine Magazine announced today the four industry professionals set to judge the first-ever Hudson Valley Wine Label Competition.

"The Face of Hudson Valley Wine" label competition is now accepting entries from all winemakers in the Hudson Valley AVA (American Viticultural Area). Entry is open to all bonded wineries in the Hudson Valley region, whose wines can generally be found at local and Metro NY-area wine shops, farm markets, as well as at their wineries.

Awards will be given to the best-designed labels in several categories, including: Best Type Design, Best Use of Illustration or Photography, Most Memorable Label, Most Recognizeable as a Hudson Valley Wine, among others. Labels will be judged by the distinguished panel of four key design, branding and marketing industry professionals below:

Gordon Kaye
Editor and Publisher of Graphic Design USA, since 1963 the monthly trade magazine for graphic design professionals. This is his 20th year in the Editor's post. In a prior career, he was a Senior General Attorney at NBC Television Network, handling intellectual property and communications regulatory matters as well as script clearance for Saturday Night Live.

Gordon is a graduate of Hamilton College and Columbia Law School, and often speaks at graphic arts industry shows and events. Graphic Design USA also publishes a 50,000-visitor-a-month website and several eNewsletters, as well as sponsors the award programs for Graphic Design, Inhouse Design, Package Design and Web Design.

Melissa Ifkovits
Hudson Valley born and raised, and after working for a number of years in the financial services industry, Melissa's interest in wine was taken to a professional level when sparked by a trip to the Wine Gardens of Austria. She has toured some of the most treasured wine producing regions in the world and was fortunate to have worked the harvest of 2008 in Sonoma, California.

Her credentials include a Business Degree from Berkeley College, a BS Degree in Marketing and Finance from Marist College, an Advanced Certificate in Wine and Spirits from London's Wine & Spirit Education Trust and was recently accepted into WSET's Diploma Program. Melissa is currently a Wine Sales Consultant for Southern Wine and Spirits and an amateur artist working with mixed media.

Mark LaRocca
President of LaRocca Branding & Advertising, Inc., Mark is a thirty-three year veteran of the branding and advertising industry, founding his own practice in 1994, now headquartered in Rhinebeck, New York. LaRocca Branding & Advertising, Inc. specializes in naming, logo design and slogan writing for new brands, products, services and companies.

Over the course of his career, in cities ranging from Pittsburgh to Washington to New York to Boulder, Mark has provided a variety of brand building services to the world's marketers, global and local, including Tropicana, Taylor Wines, Stroh Brewery, Nestl� and Nabisco. He is one of the creative minds behind the naming of many products, brands and product extensions while employed as a branding consultant by two of the world's top international brand identity consultancies in New York City-Interbrand and David Wood Associates.

Robert LaValva
Founder and director of New Amsterdam Market, whose mission is to reinvent the Public Market as a civic institution in the City of New York. Robert worked for ten years as a city planner in New York, where he developed and implemented an innovative urban composting program. He left government to pursue his interest in sustainable agriculture and regional development and found his way to Slow Food in 2003. There, he instituted the n