Read on for three top tips for wine businesses to know before meeting with a graphic design or branding guru.

You’re a winemaker – you’ve spent years researching, testing (especially taste-testing) and bottling your delicious drop, and now you’ve somehow got to make it marketable, noticeable and profitable. You need a brand.

You might have a name already but need a design, you might not have anything developed yet, or you might want a fresh new name and look entirely. Whatever spot you’re in, you’ll likely speak with a graphic design or branding business to get you the right look, feel and voice for your wine, and more importantly, bring you the right customers. After all, you just want the right people to enjoy a drink of your delicious drop, right?

It may be on the bottom of your list, but having the right branding can really bring your wine to life; from bottle labels and cellar door signage to stationary and websites.

We met with Matthew Remphrey, founder and creative director at Parallax, one of South Australia’s most prolific branding businesses. With wine labels making up 50% of their 15-year clientele, Parallax not only live and breathe design, but they love their wine too. Matthew gave us these top tips for winemakers to consider before meeting with a design or branding studio and beginning your branding journey.

Know your business: work out what your story is, who your customer is and be true to that.

It may sound simple, but ask yourself some key questions about your brand. Whether you’re starting from scratch or you’re an existing brand, it’s important to have good knowledge of your brand. Matthew says many winemakers learn more about their business than they knew before, just by asking a few simple questions:

• What is your story?
• What are you producing?
• Who is your customer?
• What makes you different?

Be clear about the future: what you want to be, and what you are producing.

Matthew says “if you work out what you want to be doing in ten years time, then you can work through how you’re going to get there…”

• What do you hope to produce in the future?
• What do you want to sell it at?
• Where are your customers buying it?
• Is it restaurants, East End Cellars or Dan Murphy’s?
• Who goes there?

Ask yourself what the market is doing, and also what people aren’t doing.

You have an opportunity to claim your own space for yourself and your wine brand. There is no point coming into a market and wanting your brand to look the same as your competitors.

“If you’re copying or following a trend, there’s too much competition out there,” Matthew says. “If there’s a trend that’s really growing, let’s see what’s really motivating people and see if there’s a space where we can appeal to them but do something different.”

You love wine, they love wine, and now it’s time to shout it from the rooftops with kick- #*#% branding that will have everybody loving you right back.

If you want to find out more about Parallax, contact Matthew here. 

Got any hot tips on wine-branding that you feel like sharing? Had any wine-branding horrors? Send us an email here or let us know in the comments below!