What’s the point of scrambling to buy a birthday card when everything could be said with a bottle of wine?

Courtney Bowditch and Liza Behles decided to turn the greeting card industry on its head with the launch earlier this month of Santa Monica company Delicate Estates, a line of adhesive greeting cards that double as wine labels.

Bowditch said the idea came from personal experience.

“We always wished you could give someone a bottle of wine that said the thing you wanted it to say,” Bowditch said. “Why can’t the wine bottle do the talking?”

Delicate Estates offers 12 greeting cards, sold online, for celebrating everything from birthdays, weddings, to parenthood. But like its quirky concept, don’t expect all of the titles to be traditional.

The co-founders took things further introducing punchy labels, such as “You got fired. Now your whole life is a weekend!” and “You’re having an existential crisis. Really? This again?”

Prices start at $7 for a single label and run to $50 for a 12-pack.

Customers simply peel back the adhesive and wrap it over an existing wine label. The front features a catchy title against a splash of color, while the back of the white label includes text normally found on the inside of a card.

The two friends work as freelancers for various local advertising agencies and met five years ago when working at ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder, Colo.

Behles said Delicate Estates plans to launch even more of its dark-humored labels and hopes to make them available in stores such as gift shops.

“We would love to do a ‘You just came out to your parents’ with a rainbow label or ‘You just froze your eggs,’” she said. “Things that are big deals but you certainly want to drink after.”

– Subrina Hudson