Espelt
Empordà in a bottle
Brand
Espelt
Client
Espelt wine producers
Place
Alt Empordà, Girona,
Spain
The challenge
Conceptualising and launching the Espelt brand.
Creating a relevant brand, a brand that reflects the personality of wine from this region and that of its family owners.
Insights
L’Alt Empordà region’s special characteristics have left their mark both on this type of wine and on the personality of its family owners.
For several generations, the Espelt family has been devoted to viticulture, becoming the largest wine grower in the region. When we started our project, their new cellar had recently been built and they needed to create their brand to market their own wines.
Espelt produces a great, honest wine with a very defined character.
First of all, we let ourselves be inspired by the Empordà, and we spent many hours talking with the family members, even those not involved in the business.
That helped us see that the new brand would have to evoke a passion for the area, for viticulture, enological rigour, authenticity, rauxa (an impulse or an unplanned action) and the influence of the Tramontana wind and the sea. Of course, not 7 things, but a single one approached from various angles!
The Promise
Creating a brain-pleasing brand that (1) evokes the personality of the wine made by the Espelt family, and (2) is the marketing driver.
The concept
Drawing up a project that includes a marketing strategy, a brand conception and a communication and commercialisation plan.
This project involved working on several elements:
- Understanding the brand actors: they ended up being the Espelt individuals, not the Espelt company.
- Book explaining what “Espelt wine producers” is about.
- Briefing on packaging – including labels, capsules, back labels, etc.
- Procedures for creating the product catalogue, conceptualising each of them based on an enological understanding.
- Briefing for the design agency.
- Briefing for the back-label script so it was customer focused.
- Briefing for the design of advertising prototypes.
- Set of elements for fairs (stand, materials, processes, etc.).
- Managing all involved experts.
Outcome
Through the whole design, people are able to sense the bold and authentic character of Espelt wines.
The designed brand reflects the personality of l’Alt Empordà and the work of unconventional, authentic and daring people.
The Espelt brand had to be closely linked to the feelings evoked by its environment and its impact on the people and the wine: Tramontana wind, luminosity, magic, impulse, surrealism, etc.
This was summarised as “Espelt viticultors, la rauxa empordanesa” (Espelt wine producers, the Empordà rauxa“.
Today, the brand is not only recognised and commercially consolidated, but – with the talent of Anna Espelt, its current Director – new types of wine have been launched and they have penetrated new overseas markets.
Project Partners
In order to communicate such unique brand – so distant from the traditional wine code – achieved through product design and the other elements mentioned above, a design team with a similar personality was required.
The agency chosen was Estudio Mariscal.