In a federal lawsuit, Vampire Vineyards complained that "Stewart and Omnimedia, and all other defendants, are intentionally attempting to disparage and tarnish plaintiff's wine brands by portraying a mock label of Vampire Vineyards attached to cheap nondescript wine and spirits." Exactly what that means is as of press time unclear, but the wording of the suit -- at least what we've seen of it -- seems to imply that Stewart has been reproducing the Vampire Vineyards label and attaching it to shittier wine than Vampire's. Just because she's Martha Stewart, we like to imagine her affixing the label to other decorative objects, as well.
The reason, Vampire claims, is that Stewart's recently launched Gallo wine label is in competition with Vampire, and so she's sabotaging their operations -- although one assumes those attracted to a wine affiliated with Martha Stewart and those attracted to a wine affiliated with vampires would represent substantially different demographics. Interestingly, Vampire also claims the following on its website: "Rumor has it that the Vampire Vineyards are actually owned by a circle of vampires and our company's founder, Michael Machat, an entertainment attorney from New York, is actually just a front" -- even though it seems reasonable to assume that the Vampire PR reps who wrote that would be able to confirm or deny that rumor.
At any rate, it seems like kind of a counterintuitive move on Stewart's part, but she's been known to resort to unscrupulous business tactics in the past. And just in case Stewart did associate Vampire's name with an inferior product, we're going to do them a favor by associating it with a product so badass he would murder you in cold blood for even saying the word "inferior" in his presence:
That's right, Vampire. You can thank us later.
