Two printing technologies dominate small-format wine label production. Letterpress, the traditional impression-printing method using metal or photopolymer plates, leaves a slight impression in the paper. Digital printing, using inkjet or laser technology, lays ink flat on the paper without impression. Both produce legible labels; the visual signatures are different.
Letterpress
The letterpress impression creates a slight indentation in the paper at every printed character. The ink sits in the indentation, slightly darker at the edges than at the center, with a small halo where the paper compressed. The fingertip can feel the impression. Letterpress reads as artisanal, hand-crafted, slow. The technology is slow and expensive at scale; the result is the strongest possible visual signature.
Digital
Digital printing lays ink flat on the paper without impression. The result is dimensionally flat but more uniform than letterpress. Color reproduction is better; the digital printer can match any specified color with high precision. Digital is fast and inexpensive; the result is technically excellent but lacks the visual signature of letterpress.
Our choice
We use hot-foil stamping for the brand line and digital printing for the back-label legend and crest. The foil stamping gives the brand line the dimensional quality of letterpress without the production cost; the digital handles the more complex artwork at the production scale we need. Hybrid approach, calibrated for the heirloom-feeling result at small batch sizes.
When to use letterpress
Pure letterpress is the right choice for very small batches (under twenty-four bottles) where the customer wants the artisanal signature throughout. We do not currently offer this; the production cost is prohibitive at our standard volumes. Customers wanting full letterpress should expect a per-bottle cost two to three times our standard rate.