Traditionally, wineries take their names from places or families, and wine package designs take their cues from classic Italian and French models. But how many classy wine bottles from Eagle Creek and Caravaggio Cellars do we need? Most people can't remember the name of that wonderful Pinot Grigio they had last Saturday, not to mention the Riesling uncle Billy brought for New Year's Eve. The names begin to mean nothing, and the designs just sit there looking pretty.

Bernie Hadley-Beauregard thinks it's better to create a conversation, maybe even entertain wine drinkers with unexpected stories. His company, Brandever, bases its designs on regional history, local culture, or the defining characteristics of the owners. When they find the right story, they express it through offbeat names and nontraditional graphics.

Blasted Church is Brandever's first baby. Looking around the winery's hometown, Okanagan Falls, they found a 108-year-old church with an unusual past: It wasn't built where it stands now, but in an abandoned gold rush camp 16 miles away. As the old-timers say, waste not, want not. The intrepid Okanagan pioneers decided to take it apart, move it to town, and rebuild it for their own use. They had the brilliant idea of loosening the nails by putting four sticks of dynamite inside and setting off a controlled blast. They lost the steeple in the explosion, but the church came apart easily, the boards were loaded onto trucks, and Okanagan Falls got a nice, secondhand church, presumably with low mileage (gold diggers aren't exactly known for their piety).

Hadley-Beauregard loved this story, and named the winery Blasted Church. The initial reaction wasn't great. "Isn't that kind of blasphemous?" people would say. But it worked as a hook: That question needed an answer, and the salesman or sommelier could answer it. "No, it comes from a real story, and the church is still standing. Back in 1929 ... ." That's the whole point of using a challenging name. It starts conversations, and the stories that come out are unforgettable. If you like the wine, you'll remember the name-especially compared to the original name, Prpich Hills. When the current owners bought Prpich Hills in 2003, it was floundering. In just three years with the name Blasted Church, it has become one of the top three wineries in British Columbia's wine region, winning design awards and wine awards all over North America.

The name and design got the wine the attention it deserved. The charmingly spazzy illustrations, by Toronto artist Monika Melnychuk, carry the story. Apart from a brief statement that the name is based on local history, you get the story from expressive period caricatures of the mining engineer with the dynamite, the worried pastor, or a pair of amused sisters, with other story elements on the back of the wraparound label, such as a truck carrying a stained glass window. You'd have to see all 12 packages to piece the story together, which not only lets the sommelier start a conversation, it encourages wine-bibbers to collect all 12 bottles.

The design creates a brand family by combining distinctive design for the different products with a strong central identity unified by color, typography, and humor. Each varietal has a differently shaped or colored bottle and a different illustration. For unity, all the labels are set low on the bottle, all but two of the cork capsules are cream-colored, and all the UPCs are worked into the illustrations in clever ways. In fact, there are little visual jokes all over the place, such as the year of the wine, 2002, set on the license plate of a truck.

Other details support the products and the story. The earth tones of the illustrations reflect the colors of the wines. The typography, in a slightly tortured old style font, is tossed around like steeples in a "controlled" blast, but you can read it because it's big and is generally set on monochrome backgrounds.

The name change and new packages were first steps. Brandever followed them up with a marketing campaign with its own bits of wit. The winery store isn't a pseudo-chateau, but a log cabin with a steep, snow-shedding roof, frankly adapted to the British Columbian climate. Or how about the Midnight Service they host at the annual Okanagan Fall Wine Festival? It's not in the old church (that probably would be blasphemous, even if Jesus did turn water into wine). Instead, it's in the winery's cellar and features the Gospel Experience Choir, food from Vancouver's Memphis Blues Barbecue House, and, of course, lots of Blasted Church wine.

The firm has also done more conventional promotion, entering wine-industry competitions as far away as London and Los Angeles, and getting extensive coverage for the owners in trade publications. But any disciplined and experienced marketing team can do that: Wit makes the difference here. Over the few years Brandever has been in business, they've found that a witty name change and redesign alone can boost sales as much as 525 percent. The key is to find the right story. www.dirtylaundry.ca

For a vineyard whose new owners came from a background in high finance, they chose the name Laughing Stock. The bottles were screenprinted with small labels that look like stock listings- the contraction LFNG sits over numbers for the vintage year. Other text and numbers wrap around the bottles like ticker tape. The name itself has a bunch of meanings. Laughing says entertainment; Stock refers both to the inventory and the owners' former careers; the full phrase is slyly humble. Any negative connotations are undermined by the sleek, delicate design. www.laughingstock.ca

Then there's the winery at the southern tip of New Zealand. The name was easy: Earth's End. But what of the label? This unknown winery needed something that would get a lot of attention, fast. The national obsession here is rugby, and the New Zealand All Blacks happen to be world champions-undefeated for over a decade. They open every game with a Maori war chant, "A, ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!" (Will it be death? Will it be life?) Standing in a strong half-squat, they slap their thighs, punch the air, scowl, pound their chests, and generally scare the pants off the opposition. What better theme for the end of the earth? www.otagowine.com

In every case, the witty story and presentation create powerful distinction. As shoppers scan racks of wine or wine lists, the name and the graphics stop them. "What does that mean?" They almost have to pick it up and find out. Once they know the story, they'll never forget it. After that, it's up to the wine.

About the author
Jonathan Ford is designer and co-founder of Pearlfisher, a future-focused design consultancy in London and New York.

This article was originally published in the July 2006 issue of Step inside design magazine.

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