The late Bill Hicks once took a brilliant stance on marketing:

There’s no rationalization for what [people who work in marketing] do …[They] are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.

I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing, he’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market, he’s very smart.” Oh man, I am not doing that. You f*cking evil scumbags!

…”Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now, he’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.” Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scumbags! Quit putting a Goddamn dollar sign on every f*cking thing on this planet!”

With that as an introduction, Time Magazine reports about a wine being sold bearing the likeness of Adolph Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Stalin, and Benito Mussolini:

Führerwein is the marketing stroke of Andrea Lunardelli, a 38-year-old Italian winemaker based in Udine, northern Italy. “We have been selling this kind of wine for more than 10 years,” Lunardelli tells me. “Sometimes people get angry with those labels. But we choose them because people want them. It is not Italians that buy these kinds of labels. The majority are German and Austrian.” The Historic Line is dominated by Nazi images but also features others, including the Communist Collection with labels of Lenin and Che Guevara.

I ask Lunardelli how he would respond to someone, like me, whose family members were killed or persecuted by the men he uses as a sales gimmick. “We are not against the feelings of this person,” he replies. “I am not happy about it. For us it is only marketing. We don’t put the swastika on our labels. We have canceled all the swastikas.” German law bars any trade using Hitler portraits, swastikas or National Socialist symbols. What is not forbidden is importing Hitler wine for private use.

“Turning Leaf” this ain’t.