Message on a Bottle

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If you're like most wine drinkers, you pick by the label. Despite Wine Spectator reviews and prominent sites on wine-country tour maps, most wine is sold from supermarket shelves to casual wine drinkers who literally choose the bottle (or, increasingly, the box) based on what’s pasted on the front.

As more competition hits the shelf the wine industry is pumping more money into designing eye-catching wine labels. “Even if consumers are familiar with the wine, they expect the package to reinforce the positive information they already have,” says Ken Horiszny, co-founder of HKA Design in San Francisco, which does wine package design for wineries worldwide. “In the absence of any knowledge, the package plays the most powerful role in establishing brand personality. It helps determine which wine brands get invited to dinner and which are left on the shelf.”

In the early days, most labels were austere, rectangular one- or two-color affairs featuring illustrations of chateaus and names of the wineries in bold. Now, wine labels burst with bold colors and warped shapes, often peering through the bottle itself. They are festooned with colorful animals, layered with screens and hidden motifs and myriad fonts. Bottles, too, are now an area of focus, coming in different sizes, colors and weights and featuring “designer capsules” and “V-caps,” or natural cork stoppers.

There are only a select few wine-packaging designers out there, and if they do a good job, they are literally responsible for a jump in sales. “A label is extremely critical, because it can make or revive a brand,” says Susan Pate, a San Francisco-based designer who has created labels for high-end wines from Robert Mondavi, Moet & Chandon and the Harlan Estate. “You also need the right wine and price. If it’s not packaged well, it’s a harder sell. But if a winery targets $40 for a bottle and the packaging turns out really well, it could actually get $60 a bottle.”

CRITTERS VS. ART

As there are differences in wine vintages, so there are differences in labels, based on the winery’s reputation and price point. Wines under $15 a bottle offer eye-catching names like Fat Bastard and Plungerhead and bright labels that increasingly feature animals (Yellowtail’s kangaroo, Fat Bastard’s hippo) and names like Four Emus and Three Blind Moose. “They need to be iconic, easy to pronounce,” says Horiszny. “When people look at this bottle, they’re expecting something irreverent and quality consistent with the price. If you’re looking for higher wine quality, you’re probably looking for more traditional cues.”

Pate sniffs at the “critter labels,” as she calls them, and focuses on more high-end brands. Her labels tend to have white backgrounds but feature elegantly curved fonts, classic artwork and gold-edged lions, cameos and coats of arms. They could easily be framed on the wall.

“For the more premium wines, the goal is to emphasize the longevity and durability of their brand,” she says. “As you go up in price, there is more soul, more identity and more communication from the vendor. There are actual stories to how the wine is made. If there’s a history to the family, the winemakers, the property, all that helps grow a brand.”

Her labels may not be as colorful as critter labels, but they cost a pretty penny to design, as high-end wineries spare no expense. For example, the label she created for Opus One, the joint venture between Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild, took over a year and cost more than $100,000 (a not unheard of fee and she won out over Andy Warhol). She spent a month with the 82-year-old baron at his Chateau Mouton in France, usually meeting with him in his bedroom because he conducted business in his bed. “I was up from 6 a.m. to midnight and spent 1,500 hard hours on hand-designed mock-ups,” she remembers.

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