Hot on the heels of the excitement it caused, and awards it won, with its Wine-In-Tube packaging for the Tateham’s Waterhole range, Taylors Wines has launched its most striking and ambitious packaging design to date. Winning two gold medals at the 2013 Printing Industry Craftsmanship Awards, a gold medal at the 2013 Australian Packaging Design Awards and an award at the 2014 Worldstar World Packaging Organisation Awards last year, has made an innovative spirit integral to the personality of the brand.
The super-premium wine, The Visionary Cabernet Sauvignon, will only be released in exceptional vintages. 2009 was an exceptional vintage, so this is its inaugural release.
As well as producing standard size bottles of the wine, the Taylors family has bottled a very limited number of six litre imperials. Just ten of these will be released for sale – with a recommended retail price of $5000.
Its packaging underscores the top tier position on which this wine stands. On purchase, the wine lover will be handed a Tasmanian blackwood presentation box containing a key.
The key unlocks a bespoke cabinet that Taylors commissioned Adelaide-based master craftsman Andrew Bartlett to create. Each cabinet is crafted out of a single piece of hand selected Tasmanian blackwood that matches that of the presentation box. Its fixtures and fittings have been finished in rhodium to ensure that they, like the cabinet and the wine, will safely see in the second half of this century.
Included too are the letter of authenticity personally signed by Mitchell Taylor and a series of limited edition photographic prints featuring a selection of specially commissioned images of The Visionary and its cabinet, shot by photographer, Keith Saunders, whose worldwide fame has been built with work for De Beers, Sydney Opera House, Royal Opera House, Shell International, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and EMI Records.
Buyers of The Visionary in the standard size bottle are also rewarded with a packaging delight. Each bottle is individually hand labelled, hand numbered and hand packaged in a bespoke design luxury gift box and outer sleeve.
The outer sleeve of the gift box is a metallised silver paper stock, and the Taylors seahorse crest is a laser die-cut with a de-bossed foil block at the base. The inner gift box is hand wrapped in black linen book cloth.
The label for each individually torn label and the dust jacket on the accompanying vintage booklet are presented on stock sourced from an Italian mill founded in 1717. A hand sewn vintage booklet accompanies each bottle of The Visionary. It details the history, vintage conditions, vinification and maturation of the super-premium wine.
The Visionary's sophisticated packaging is the creation of Sydney-based design consultants, The Collective, who have been working with the winery since 2008. Their collaborations on the 2010 Taylors Winemaker’s Project Grenache Shiraz Mataro, Crooked Horse Semillon Sauvignon Blanc and Promised Land Moscato were awarded in the Australia’s Wine Industry Design Competition 2012 and 2013, respectively.
