Thanksgiving is the easiest brief we get. The table is set for fourteen, the wine is being passed to the right, and the family bottle is going to be opened at the head and at the foot of the table simultaneously. The customer wants the bottle to look as if it has always been there. The customer wants the bottle to belong.
Two bottles, one label
Our standard package is forty-eight bottles, twenty-four reds and twenty-four whites, under the same custom label. For Thanksgiving the math is comfortable: a bottle of red and a bottle of white at the head of each long table, a backup for the second pour, a case left for the family cellar. The leftover bottles get tucked into the wine rack, and by Christmas the family has the same label on the table again, and by the next Thanksgiving the label has become the family wine.
Brand line: the family's name, nothing more
The brand line on every Vine Reserve label is a single family name. The renderer appends RESERVE in foil, so the bottle reads, for example, MARTIN RESERVE at the head of the label. For Thanksgiving the brand line is the head of the household's family name. The bottle is the household's. Three generations later, the bottle is still the household's.
The quote line
Use the quote line for a phrase the family has been saying for forty years. A grace the grandfather opens with, in two words, in Latin or in whatever the family language of origin is. A nickname for the table. The street the family has lived on longest. Italic serif, soft ink, the way a wine-maker's note reads on the back label. The grandchild sees it once at six and remembers it at thirty.
Lead time
The label printer and bonded inventory are in-house. From the studio click to the boxes arriving at the front door is one to two weeks. The customer designing on the first Monday of November has the bottles on the table by the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.