Tinta de Vi

Designed by LADYSSENYADORA, Spain.

Tinta de Vi was born from the desire to design something crazy and daring. Ladyssenyadora, a Catalan graphic design studio, decided to create their own brand of wine, inspired by the designers’ love of wine and the world of label design.

Under normal circumstances, their own clients usually produce tens of thousands of bottles. But their own brand is a limited edition of about 100-200 bottles, allowing them to treat each bottle in a special way. Their aim was to develop a label for their wine that was “impossible”. In order to deem their design as such they decided to use real wine to print the label. Thus came the wine’s name: “Tinta de vi”.

The opportunity arose when one of their winery clients accepted the conditions of payment with wine. The following day they were sent 150 bottles of the best vintage.

The tumultuous road of discovering how to print with wine started with the wine making cycle itself. They first tried printing using the leftover “cake” from the first grape pressing using silkscreen or letterpress. But the excess wine from the cake created wrinkles and splotches on the paper. They tried leaving the wine to dry out in the sun, but the resulting pigment didn’t work either. They thought of cooking with wine, so a wine reduction option was put to the test. They even tried real wine with a home-printer. But nothing worked.

When all options failed them and they were feeling down and out, they heard words of wisdom calling from above saying, “Children, fear not! Go upstairs to the roof terrace and have a smoke” (which is where they usually go to clam their nerves). There, amongst the weeks-old leftover trial samples, they noticed several pools of partly-dried wine that had formed a sort of dark-red goo that was perfect for printing!

Finally, together with Marçal Font as photographer and Jorge Croissier on video, “Tinta de vi” came to life. With Ladyssenyadora, it’s not only about good taste and good wine but it’s the good design too that allows us to enjoy it all.