(QZ) - Anybody who has struggled to choose a bottle of wine in the US has felt the intense competition of the American wine industry. As W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne write in their book Blue Ocean Strategy, just eight companies control 75% of wine sales in the US. That leaves approximately 1,600 smaller wineries to duke it out for the remaining 25% of sales.

Wineries will stop at nothing to capture the attention of key customer demographics. Just ask the folks at Happy Bitch Wines. “A wine’s label must catch the eye of the customer,” wine sales expert Kyle Vidovich tells Quartz. Vidovich, 29, is a professional merchandizer for the largest wine distributor in the United States, E. & J. Gallo Winery. Gallo’s portfolio includes such mass produced wines such as Barefoot, Boone’s Farm, and Carlo Rossi.

Vidovich suggests that for many wines, the perception of taste, rather than taste itself, is paramount to sales. “Wines that have been rated on a 100-point scale, and wines that have done well in some sort of competition are three times more likely to be bought than wines that do not promote any distinction,” says Vidovich. However, there is a catch. “Rated wines are not necessarily better wines. I have a hard time believing that some wines would actually score so high in any sort of credible competition,” he admits.

Some wineries have turned to celebrities to promote their latest vintage. Drew Barrymore’s name adorns a wine made in Italy. NASCAR star Jeff Gordon’s wine is produced in California, and Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump produces his wine just a few miles from “the birthplace of American viticulture,” in rural Virginia.

Ryan Hill—whose Hill Family Estates winery is one of those 1,600 smaller wineries vying for a minority of the market—has worked with his fair share of famous industry outsiders.

Hill found his way into this new style of marketing wines when he and Fender Custom Shop manager Mike Eldred decided to collaborate on a wine staining project. Eldred sent Hill blocks of wood, which Hill stained in wine and sent back to Eldred. Fender, in turn, crafted one hundred guitars out of the stained wood and packaged the guitar with six rare Hill Family Estate wines. The collaboration was a hit. Hill told Quartz that his last guitar-wine package sold for $15,000.

But while Hill found early success with Fender and big name sports stars such as baseball hall-of-famers Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux, collaboration was most fruitful in the unlikeliest of places: the surfing world.

After Hill wine-stained San Diego-area surfer Kyle Knox’s surfboard, the two went on to create a Cabernet-Merlot-Syrah wine called the “Barrel Blend.” A barrel wave is what many surfers will call the perfect wave. For Hill and Knox, the Barrel Blend was the perfect wine.