Amazing Wine Label Designs

Wine label design is something that we've been interested in for a long time now. We've recently embarked on our first wine label design project and so we've been doing a bit of research. I wanted to share with you some of the better wine label designs that I've found recently.

As with many areas of design, my taste in wine labels leans towards to the modern. I also like labels that are somewhat atypical - out of this whole list there's only one standard-shaped label. These aren't your parent's wine labels!

While researching wine label designs, I was often frustrated by the lack of photos & info available on the iterwebs about certain wines. There were many labels that I wanted to include in this post but I couldn't find decent photographs of them.

Also, trying to figure out who the designers are behind wine labels can be tricky. I've credited the designers of these labels whenever possible. If you know who designed any of the un-credited labels here, please let me know.

Élu and Virtú from St. Supéry Vineyards & Winery (Napa Valley)

Winner of the Double Gold award at the 2008 San Francisco International Wine Competition, I love the way the text is rotated 90 degrees from the image. I can imagine a designer getting fed up trying to cram all that text into a standard label and deciding to just put it all sideways instead.

Block Shiraz by Branson Coach House (Australia)

Excellent typography on this one! Very simple... very refined.

Lazarus Wine (Spain), designed by Baud

The premise of this Spanish winery is to produce wine that is grown and cultivated by the blind. The braille labels is a natural design choice for a winery with this mandate.

Shefa Young Wine (Israel), designed by Nine99Design

Excellent idea for the die-cut labels, although the circular one doesn't do as much for me.

Ramian Estate Winery (California), by Icon Design Group.

Ultra minimalist... very sexy! I wonder if this wine has a back label...

Return of the Living Red from Redheads Studio (Australia), design by M/A/S/H

A very unique label! From the M/A/S/H description:
"This was a complex fine wine with no listed age; a mysterious and intriguing wine. To compliment this the nature of the product, Mash developed a concept to create a small pack containing missing and/or suppressed crime files implying the existence of the living dead in and around the vineyards. With use of disturbing illustrations and fascinating old photos on a toothy uncoated paper the concept was bought to life. A slip knot with old twine and a deep red wax dipped bottle went with the old crime file folder"

Full line-up from Magpie Estate Winery (Australia), design by M/A/S/H

The consistency across the whole line-up is wonderful! The illustrations have a very retro/vintage feel to them but the overall effect of the labels is still fairly modern.

Bodega Mas Romani (Span), designed by Studio Copyright

These would certainly stand out from a row of bottles on a wine shop shelf.

Flying Pig Pinot Noir, winery unknown, by Philip Skinner

Excellent use of white space - the long & narrow label really works well here.

Burrowing Owl (BC), design by Herrainco Brand Strategy + Design

One of my favorite BC wines (mmmm....!) I love the placement of their label near the bottom of the bottle - it's like the bottles luxuriate in all of the un-used space. This label was designed when the winery first opened in 1997 and hasn't been changed since.

That's it for now. I could go on... and I will at a later date. There are a ton of great wine label designs out there! What are your favorites? Bonus points if you can tell me who designed them.

- L.