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From a few years ago, but still a beautifully simple visual idea that sells itself – The Vegetable Bar by the ever-talented Magpie Studio.
CommentsSpringing up each evening after the vegetable market closed, this impromptu venue was instantly known to locals as the Vegetable Bar. Our identity captures its nightly metamorphosis with a vegetable/ wine glass sillhouette, and a subdued nocturnal colour palette.
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A simple design and a beautiful concept for a limited edition of 600 bottles, hand-painted (or perhaps dipped) in an umber hue as though pulled straight from the ground.
Cantamanyanes is a handcrafted wine in the Tivissa lands, made without intermediaries or distributors, from the earth to the table.
Designed by Enserio, Spain and seen via Lovely Package.
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As mentioned below, the rather elegant and reserved (not that Penfold’s could ever be descried as flash) design for the Penfold’s Claret magnum.
CommentsBottled only in magnums, inspiration for this bottle’s label was taken from an original Auldana Claret, from an era prior to the winery purchased by Penfolds in 1943.
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Typographic Monday night drinking with The Sticky Italian from Two Italian Boys, and E for Enigma from Alpha Box & Dice, one our all-time favourite labels. Both wines are bold, rich and in spite of being from Australia, very Italian in style.
Both bottles bought from Best Cellars on Crown Street, near William Street, Sydney. A fantastic little treasure trove of Aussie classics and European fine wines, where we also saw a magnum of Penfold’s Claret, a limited edition homage to ‘archetypal traditional Australian Claret’.
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We try not to reblog too much student or concept work. Packaging is a hard art to get through focus groups, revisions and technical limitations, so those ‘real’ examples deserve our attention more. Plus, kids, we can tell when it’s Photoshopped!
However, we love the simplicity, beautiful typography and the obvious effort that has gone into realising this concept for ‘Milk’ wine.
Graphic Design student Emily Hale has created and designed a ficticious San Fransiscan wine called ‘Milk’, after famous gay politician Harvey Milk.
See more of the packaging here.
(via hnhscrapbook)
CommentsGrogger Grand Tour: Mash
Having spent five ‘summer’ months in Sydney, sheltering from torrential rain and tropical thunder, it was novel to see an Australian city in the sunshine. Adelaide was bustling with the annual festival – much like the Edinburgh Fringe, but with better-looking locals.
Since Grogger’s inception, Mash studio has been on our radar, providing us with a constant stream of original and eclectic wine labels. It’s taken considerably effort not to just reblog everything on their website and retire. So they were top of our ‘cellar door’ list to visit.
Situated on the corner of North and East terrace (Adelaide, Canberra, Milton Keynes, all towns built on grid systems and all with a reputation for tedium; In Adelaide’s case, undeserved). We met with Dom Roberts, joint creative director, and headed out for some lunch in the sunshine. Mash was founded in 2002 by Dom and James Brown, who joined creatives forces when they discovered that they had both been asked to pitch for Evo cosmetics, a client they have forged a close relationship over the years since. At Dom’s graduate exhibition, he was approached by Two Hand’s to create their logo and identity. The US distributor of the wine loved the Two Hand’s branding and began to offer extra briefs, to the point where wine work formed three-quarters of their portfolio. From small beginnings, working from Dom’s house and transporting the iMac around in his car boot, Mash is now a team of 8 people, working across the spectrum of art, design, music and wine, although they have ‘no grand scheme of world domination’.
On our way back to the studio, after our delicious doorstop wedges of frittata, Dom took us to visit his friend and Best Man Gus Buchanan at East End Cellars, quite possibly the greatest wine shop we have ever encountered south of the equator. Open cases of natural wines sat stacked across the floor, and shelves upon shelves of eclectic, eccentric and exclusive wines stretched into the distance. Gus, a man with unnerving conviction when talking about wine, was kind enough to take the time to show and describe some of his favourite wines, both to drink and to look at; much of Mash’s work could be seen dotted around the shop.
Inspired and mouth-a-watering, we returned to the Mash studio. Mash’s work is characterized by an eclectic, found aesthetic; bits of Victoriana, vintage type, etchings, combined to form a unique collage, like the V&A-meets-Sherlock Holmes, and their studio space reflects this. Their studio is a homely, high-ceiling apartment, wooden-floored and eclectically decorated – Mexican Day-of-the-Dead skulls and stuffed animals sit next to AGDA annuals and iMacs. In the kitchen, a cutting mat and scalpel sits on the dining table next to the salt and pepper, surrounded by a library of wine bottles.
In the kitchen we tried our first Mash-designed wine. Having earlier discussed the constraints that working with a large, global brand can have, it an obvious choice to sample the Jacob’s Creek moscato. The label is simple, geometric, with a retro repeating pattern; a bold move compared to the conservative Jacob’s Creek labels, but understated by Mash’s standard.
Slightly sparkling and a bright, light colour the wine looked pleasant enough, but one sniff of the cloying perfume was enough to put most of us off. The flavour was sweet lychees and passionfruit, but certainly more towards that confectioner’s kitchen than the garden. One sip was pleasant enough, however any more and a pint of Opal Fruits would have been less sickly; certainly a wine aimed at teenage kicks and Sex and the City boxsets. Glasses were emptied into the sink and we moved on to the next wine, and into Mash’s meeting room.
The room, down a small flight of stairs, holds a long table and a rococo sideboard with a full row of Mash-designed bottles, with many more in the cabinets below. All of our favourites were there, and Dom was kind enough to show us some of the others we hadn’t come across before, including the chain-mail hooded Votum wine.
One of Mash’s closest collaborators is ‘rogue-vintner’ Justin Lane (formerly of the Red Head’s studio) who set us his own label, Alpha Box and Dice, in 2005. The aim of ABD is produce a different wine each year, using different grapes and in a different style, with each wine crafted around a letter of the alphabet. The next wine we sampled was Alpha Box and Dice’s letter ‘M for Mistress’ wine, described as
Late again with a guilty look and the smell of sweet fruit lingering all around you. Whose purple kisses are smeared all over you?
Ripe, juicy and bursting with a vigorous desire to be seen and heard, the wine was a young blend of Touriga Nacional (40%), Tinta Negra Molle (40%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (20%). Lacking in noticeable tannin, the wine was reminiscent of an Italian ‘vino novello’ made to be slurped with reckless abandon, young and seductive, but perhaps not one for a serious relationship.
Talking about how Mash approach designing a wine label, Dom talked about a ‘disruptive approach’ to packaging. ‘It has to create interest and look great, not be just another label. It’s natural for us to be illustrative, to create standout.’ It’s evident that Mash strive to produce something that hasn’t been done before, to fill those gaps in the market where there isn’t a photo of Elvis in a swimming pool or flocked-textured wordsearch. ‘We want to get away from tradition and to bring romance back’ says Dom.
Looking at Mash’s wine portfolio, you can see that their ideas are beautifully crafted as well as intriguing and unusual. The eclectic, illustrative surroundings of the studio are reflected in their work. Asked about their eclectic aesthetic, Dom described their bottles to be appear as ‘found treasure’ amongst the bland ranks of conventional wine packaging. Having explored the vintage-collage illustration aesthetic in much of their work, Dom stated that Mash are ‘ready to move’ on, a desire exemplified by their modernist work for the Adelaide Festival that could be seen all across town.
Leaving the studio and arriving into the afternoon sunshine, purple-lipped and slightly woozy, we felt lucky and grateful to have been allowed to explore Mash’s cave of treasure.
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Anish Ka-pour me a glass
Can’t believe we missed this from December last year, but Anish Kapoor is the latest artist to grace the iconic artist lasbles for Chateau Mouton-Rothschild. Dark, brooding and beautiful, it seems to be an apt representation of the wine – not that we’re ever likely to be able to afford to try it!
Read more about the label and the artist here, via Justerini & Brooks.
CommentsThe D&AD Wine List
It’s that time of the year when designers across the world wait with bated breath for the results of the D&AD awards. Was I longlisted? Will I be In Book? Did I really just spunk another £3,000 on foamboard and bitter disappointment?
Just imagine, for every competition entry you thought of submitting, or every ticket to an awards ‘do’ you though of buying, you instead put that money towards a restaurant meal with your friends and colleagues. You could dine out at some of the best eateries, drinking their finest wines, and be a darn sight happier than sitting in a room of drunk creatives, dressed in their best ‘thinking outside the tux’ jacket and t-shirt, drinking overpriced, acrid Chilean plonk, hoping that Richard E. Grant could stop being a prick for long enough to announce your award for Best Integrated Mobile Letterhead, before embarrassing yourself by dancing (ironically) to Fleetwood Mac.
Here is a round-up of the four examples of wine packaging that have been shortlisted for a D&AD Award in the Packaging Design category, two of which (VML and Warm Red) we have featured on Grogger before:
Este
Agency: The Collective
Client: De Bortoli
Mayhem Wine Bottle
Agency: Leo Burnett Chicago
Client: Allstate
VML
Agency: Stranger & Stranger
Client: Truett Hurts Dry Creek Valley
Warm Red
Agency: Designers Anonymous
Client: Designers Anonymous
We’ll let you know when we find out if any of them have won a coveted Yellow Pencil. For our tuppence worth, our favourites are the more ‘straight-up’ packaging for Este and VML, rather than the designer gifts of the the other two, although Warm Red is a wonderfully apt marriage between wine and design.
CommentsGrogger Grand Tour: The Journey
Sydney to Adelaide is two and a half hours by jet plane, twenty-four hours by slow, juddery diesel train. The advantage of the latter is the ability to bring your own picnic and, if carefully secreted, wine too. It was an obvious choice. Our original route was scheduled to journey via Broken Hill, through the semi-desert north-east of Adelaide. However, due to significant flooding across NSW our train was to be diverted via Melbourne. After leaving Sydney at 6pm, we settled into our very spacious airline seats, popped to the hospitality car for an apéritif, then tucked into a picnic supper of brie and apple. Accompanying this was a classic Tyrell’s single vineyard semillon, the Brookdale 2011. Fresh and dry, with Granny Smith flavours and lime zing, it was a perfect foil for the creamy cheese and a game of Scrabble.
The contrast between the gentle whoosing of a European high-speed train and the clacking, jolting rumble of an Australian behemoth as it crushes kangaroos is marked, and all the more apparent when trying to sleep upright and surrounded by 60-somethings with flabby - nay, obese - epiglottises.
Around 4am, after peering into the moonlit outback for many hours, we passed through Wagga Wagga and projected our love and condolences to the team at Shine Little Light, who have experienced the floods first hand. Their spirit and resolve is inspiring, and humbling to a bunch of lah-de-dah winos like ourselves on our summer jolly. Chin up, and chin-chin.
After a fitful sleep, the sun rose over Melbourne and we paused to couple our train (The Indian Pacific, but on the wrong track) with The Overland train. For train buffs, the never-before-seen double-length Overland-Indian-Pacific would be a rare and joyous sight, so we were told. Big whoop.
Brunch was a toasted cheese and ham croissant, which was sent back return as the ham was still frozen. The Orient Express, this was not. Lunch was a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ pie, accompanied by our bottle of Thomas Two of a Kind Shiraz.
Made from grapes sourced from the Hunter Valley (our ‘start’) and McLaren Vale (our destination) it was representative of our route. (Although it was enjoyably smooth and perfectly balanced, so not representative of our journey.) The delightful dachshunds on the label gave us at least something else to look at as we continued through hours of flat farmland.
The train slowed further (how, without actually stopping?!) as we crossed the Murray River and meandered through the Adelaide hills. A beautiful burnt sunset welcomed us into Adelaide at 7pm, four later than expected and a mere 31 hours after leaving Grogger HQ in Sydney. We had arrived, pilgrims from the dusty road, ready to pray at our Mecca.
Coming up: Mash, Parallax and d’Arenberg…
CommentsGrogger Grand Tour
We’ve said it before that we believe that Australia is the spiritual home of the kind of wine that we like - wines to drink and enjoy, with personality and without pretension. Combined with a bright and creative design scene, it was an easy choice for Grogger to relocate to sunnier climes Down Under. And within this expansive landmass, where grapes are grown and wine is made from Perth to Sydney (that’s 3200km, the same distance as London to Alexandria, kids), Adelaide is the beating heart of vineous and visual expression.
The vineyards surrounding Adelaide are a chocolate box of wine styles, from bruising, brooding Barossa shiraz, to elegant, erudite Eden Valley rieslings. Clare Valley, McLaren Vale, the Adelaide Hills; almost every grape in every style can be found amongst the sunny, rolling landscapes around South Australia’s capital. Perhaps Tasmania does a prettier pinot, and Hunter a superior semillon, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better city to live in if wine is your thing.
Similarly, in the world of design, Sydney has the international branding powerhouses, and Melbourne its, erm, hipster coffee bars. But Adelaide is home to some of our favourite creative, expressive agencies that produce unique solutions to branding and packaging the local vino. (Sydney exceptions that prove the rule is Interbrand’s work for Peter Lehmann and War’s work for Logan Wines.)
So, after many 6 months of hard work and harder drinking in Sydney, it was time for our summer holiday. Ladies and gentlemen, may we present the Grogger Grand Tour: Adelaide 2012!
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Happy Birthday to Us!
It was perhaps the kind of fortuitous luck that can only happen on a leap year’s February 29th, but we were doing a WHOIS lookup for Grogger.co.uk and it was registered by us on February 28th 2007. So that makes yesterday our 5th birthday, Hooray!
Grogger was born of a desire to justify buying more wine just because it has cool label [Tick!] and review the wine and design in a witty, engaging manner [To Do…]. After a quick competition to come up with a name, Mr Adam Loxley won a bottle of vintage champagne with his contraction of ‘grog’ and ‘blogger’. The next day the domain was registered and Grogger was born.
Then we did bugger all for two years, until in 2009 we installed Wordpress and created our first post. In 2010, we switched to Tumblr and in 2011 joined Twitter. Last year the Grogger team mothballed our London HQ and moved to Sydney to explore our favourite bold, creative wines at their source. And to commemorate our 5th birthday we now have our own Facebook page. Please Like us, we’re needy.
So to celebrate we have chosen to enjoy one of our hero wines from the same vintage as ourselves. We’ve long been fans of d’Arenberg’s approach to flavoursome, characterful wines across all price points. The Dead Arm is their biggest wine, a gutsy younger brother to Grange, Stonewall and Hill of Grace, and a great addition to any cellar.
All of d’Arenberg’s varietal wines feature the same diagonal red stripe and bright coloured flashes on either side. Accompanied by idiosyncratic names that are explained on the back label, it’s a simple formula, but effective and recognisable.
The Dead Arm is 100% Shiraz. Bloody and opaque in the glass, the smell alone with make your jaw ache with the expectation of strong tannin and high alcohol. The palate is rich, powerful and spicy, and the subsequent chewy tannin and alcohol burn let us know this wine has another 5, 10, 20 years to mature. Straight out of the bottle it was too bellicose to really enjoy, but over the evening, as it took time to relax in the decanter, it’s smooth fruity characters came to the fore. Delicious and flavoursome, but it’s just getting started and has many great years ahead of it. Hopefully, a bit like Grogger.
Bought from Misha’s Fine Wines, Oxford Street for $75.00.
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