Creating a great wine label design isn’t a simple matter of embracing a few best practices. The range of possible outcomes is wide, and getting the right match for a particular vineyard may mean going in a direction completely different from other leaders in the industry. When a vintner launches a truly successful bottle design, the contents and the label will be in perfect harmony, with the look and feel of the wine echoing how it tastes and encouraging customers to try it based on a quick glance.
The following are a few examples of successful wine bottle label design. Rather than templates to copy, their inspirational value comes from the way the brands found bold and interesting ways to express the identity of their vintages in a visual form.
Jason’s Hill Beatrix Chenin Blanc
South African digital publication Wine Magazine recently gave a gold medal design award to Jason’s Hill Beatrix Chenin Blanc 2016, a soft and savory white wine that impressed the judges with the craftsmanship and content of its label. The chosen design includes light design work and delicate cursive typefaces that give it an elegant and feminine style. The magazine’s review of the wine itself pointed out that the wine lives up to its impressive label with a bright palate.
Boutinot Wines Vega del Rayo
Packaging World recently described the process that went into redesigning Boutinot’s Rioja. Instead of just defining the wines in their category, the company sought three different designs that would set its three tiers of red wines apart from one another. The design the company settled on involves a bold-looking contemporary label that features more gold detail work as the price increases. The premium version of the wine has a differently shaped label than the two other varieties, while still possessing the same distinctive logo that combines roots and lightning imagery.
Telling a story
The key part of designing a wine label that works is turning a flavor profile into a visual impression. Whether that means filigreed calligraphy, bold and colorful pictures or anything in between, the main marker of success is whether people can pick up a bottle and be confident they’ve made the right choice. Just as no two vineyards or vintages are quite the same, there’s infinite variation available for the imagery on bottles, even extending to the shape and size of the labels themselves.
To realize these designs in-house, vineyards should ensure their label printers are up to the task. Learn more at OptiMedia Labs’ U.S. store or Canadian page.