Rocky Creek Winery

Mark and Linda Holford had many of the ingredients necessary for a successful small winery: a beautiful new vineyard right on the burgeoning Cobble Hill wine route, the knowledge and experience that comes with being a 3rd generation winemaker, and a very solid portfolio of wines that were starting to win awards. But they were missing a key ingredient: a good brand. But then they happened to cross paths with Hired Guns Creative.

At that point, their branding was a mish-mash of styles and looks... none of which truly reflected the quality of their wines. They knew that in order to live up to their marketing slogan of "Great Wines - Great People - Great Experiences," they would also need a Great Brand.

They had dreams for their website: they wanted it to be a place where visitors could learn about the wines and winery, read about the winemaker's experiences, and place wine orders.

Inspired by a few bottles of "research," Richard settled into designing his first winery website: a dark, rich affair with vibrant green and gold highlights. He refreshed the old "RC" logo and intertwined images of vines with product photography by up-and-coming Nanaimo photographer, Sean Fenzl to create a truly unique winery website design.

Once Mark & Linda approved the design, Reed and Leif were brought in to build the site with all of the requested features. They chose to build the website on the popular blogging platform, WordPress, and created a custom, hand-built WordPress theme based on Richard's design. The WordPress platform allowed Mark & Linda to have full control over their content. They can now add new text, add more images to their photo galleries, and Mark can update his "Winemaker's Blog" whenever he wants... and all without needing to know any code.

Since the site launched there has been a lot of great feedback, both to Rocky Creek and to Hired Guns Creative. The site has been featured on a variety of design gallery websites, and included in a SmashingMagazine.com article entitled, Captivating Winery Websites For Your Inspiration which placed Rocky Creek in the same category as industry leaders such as Yellow Tail, Robert Mondavi Winery, and Moët Chandon.