Spanish Vintners: Wine By Design

By Suzanne Wales / ©ICEX Spain Gourmetour

When faced with a shelf displaying dozens of varieties and hundreds of producers to choose from, the wine consumer is left with a bewildering choice. Research has shown that the savvier shopper will choose first by region and then by price. But in a highly visual market, the label of the product also plays a mammoth role. Whether we admit it or not, most of us do, at least subconsciously, judge a book by its cover.

Architecture and wine

With chateaux, masías (farmhouses, typical of Aragón and Catalonia), monasteries, villas and other traditional winemaking facilities being standard fare on many labels, homage to Spain’s newest wine palaces is a logical step in the realms of modern wine marketing. Santiago Calatrava, Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are just some of the star architects that have lent their vision to the new wave of wineries in La Rioja over the past decade in a trend largely conceived to promote wine tourism in the region.

But it’s only relatively recently that bottle semblance has equaled the visual assertiveness of the product’s home base. Among one of the first to do so were the makers of Ysios, the Calatrava-designed winery that forms part of the Domecq Bodegas group. Its uncluttered, arc-shaped label recalls the undulating forms of Calatrava’s poetic structure. Navarre’s Señorio de Arínzano winery (part of the Chivite group) has gone a step further. Their first vinos de pago (single vineyard) label features the original architectural sketches by Rafael Moneo, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect responsible for Señorío de Arínzano’s elegant, harmonious project that fuses the winery’s old 18th-century estate with modern offices and wings.

Just released onto the market–and winner of first prize on the Honours Board of the 2009 Repsol Guide–is the limited edition (5,000 bottles) Frank Gehry selection for Marques de Riscal. The exuberant packaging features an abstract drawing by the über-architect in the same gold, silver and grape palate employed in his famed City of Wine, a five-star hotel located on the Marques de Riscal estate in El Ciego, La Rioja.

The personalisation of wine

Modern, digital technology has made the personalisation of wine a powerful, and certainly affordable, marketing device. A bespoke wine label is an attractive and prestigious tool for companies and event organisers and a handful of companies are now specialising in the process of making them. Personalised and rare wine labels can also become cult items; once a year the cutting-edge advertising and communications agency La Fabrica approaches an of-the-moment artist to design a label for their Matador wine, which is then marketed through La Fabrica’s website.

A handful of bodegas are taking this concept a step further by involving the consumer in the winemaking process. At Ysios, customers who purchase an entire barrel of its namesake tempranillo can have their name printed on the label when it’s ready for bottling. Pago del Vicario, a boutique winery and wine resort near Ciudad Real has a similar scheme.

Cal Celdoni, a small bodega in the Catalan DO Conca de Barberà region, partly owned by Ferran Adrià (he of elBulli fame), invites people to invest in the venture by buying their own vines. Takers get a 25-year lease on 20 GPS-tracked vines on Cal Celdoni’s up-market estate and 42 personalised bottles per year at the end of the production process. Even more hands-on activity is available at ArtCava, an innovative project run out of a small masia in Penedès. Clients can participate in every facet of the cava-making process, including the design of their own labels and cap.

Pairing wine with fashion has also come into vogue. Since 2006, Cibeles Madrid Fashion Week, Spain’s main fashion event, has commemorated the occasion with a tailor-made special edition bottle of wine selected through a blind tasting of the DO Vinos de Madrid. The first bottle featured the names of all 31 designers who participated in the event in a sleek, graphically-direct red and black design by local creative Modest Emperador.

The Future

With more and more young oenologists claiming their place in Spain’s wine industry, it’s a safe bet that the image of its wine will reflect the aesthetic ideals and tastes of this new generation. Carlos Meña Bayón, a designer based in Valladolid, is witnessing this shift, as he creates labels for DO Ribera del Duero’s winemakers. “It’s when their children take over the business that its image generally changes,” he says, “or when the vintner starts producing vino de autor (signature wine).” He cites his design for Manía–a verdejo conceived by the second generation of owners from the Felix Lorenzo Cachazo winery. The bottle features a charming butterfly design, as light and uplifting as the wine that it holds.” Manía has sold well on its image,” says Meña Bayón. “But the wine is also good and the bottle reflects that.”

In the near future, designers such as Meña Bayón will have new challenges to face. With wine sold in aluminium tins, cardboard casks, mini-dose bottles and even tubes all gaining popularity in foreign markets, they will have more formats to work with than the traditional glass bottle. (Freixenet has jumped the gun on small volume cava with the party-friendly Mini Black, which comes in a cool black and white bottle with a built-in cup). Opaz believes that Dynamic Wine Labels will soon become the norm, meaning that customers will be able to read notes and ratings of wine on their mobile phone via an imbedded QR code (or two-dimensional bar code). Blogs, social networking sites and other digital supports may also, in the future, sway consumers one way or another on their next wine purchase.

In the meantime, the label acts as our window to the wine. From the labels on the wine jars found in King Tutankhamen’s tombs to the first, rectangular-shaped labels of the early 1800s to today’s cacophony of creative imagery, wine label design reflects a social and artistic history as rich and nuanced as the taste of wine itself.

Suzanne Wales, born in Australia, is a freelance journalist based in Barcelona. She specializes in travel, design and architecture. Her work has appeared
in publications such as Wallpaper, Vogue, Frame and Concierge.
Part I of this article appeared in the Oct-Nov ‘09 issue.