OAX ORIGINAL

Agency: Bardo Industries
Creative Director: Laura Giraudo
Designer & Art Director: Roberto Bernasconi
Photographer: Celeste Martearena
Location: United States
Project Type: Produced
Client: OAX ORIGINAL
Product Launch Location: United States
Packaging Contents: Mezcal
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Ceramic

OAX Original® is a collaborative artistic endeavor presenting the distinctive flavors and raw beauty of wild agave through three limited-edition expressions: Arroqueño, Tobalá, and Tepeztate. Each of the unique small-batch mezcales is made from agave plants found in the semi-arid Central Valleys of Oaxaca, which average 12 to-25-years to reach maturity. Once foraged, the hearts of the agaves are slow-cooked in the ground with oak and mesquite, stone-ground by horse, then wild yeast fermented in pine barrels before being double distilled. OAX is a multi-sensorial experience, where the bottle embodies the mezcal in touch and sight—from its raw texture recalling dirt, bricks, and adobe, to the pure volumes that define its form, size, and surfaces, as well as their interaction with light and shadows.

The “Search for Beauty” is the driving force behind OAX Original®, and this quest unequivocally intersects with art. The brand acts as a collaborative artistic endeavor presenting the distinctive flavors and raw beauty of wild agave through its three limited-edition expressions while extending its representation into the world of art through partnerships with designers, musicians, visual artists, chefs, photographers, and more.

The three bottles in black (Arroqueño—from an agave plant of 18 years), white (Tobalá—12 years), and pink (Tepeztate—25 years), are produced in Pachuca, Mexico, and designed by OAX Original® Creative Team, Laura Giraudo, and Roberto Bernasconi, co-founders of Bardo Industries– an interdisciplinary Design Studio based in Brooklyn, NY. The bottle itself draws inspiration from vernacular Mexican architecture, a blend between the mysterious monolithic pre-Hispanic architecture and Euro-American Modernist designs spearheaded by Luis Barragán and presently embodied in the work of architects Frida Escobedo, Mauricio Rocha and Gabriela Carrillo, among others.

OAX Original® comes in a silkscreened kraft box, equating the unboxing experience with that of an art piece or a design item. “Our bottle is more than a container. It’s the representation of OAX in space. It’s unsettling, convulsive, and cryptic, an ‘obscur objet du désir’. It’s a statement, a preamble to the drinking experience, it’s the unexpected”.

What’s Unique?
Custom ceramic bottle inspired by vernacular mexican architecture, to house a high shelf wild agave mezcal. The monolitic bottle comes inside a silk-screened cardboard box, printed inside and outside.