LONA est VIA wine

Design: the Labelmaker
Location: Bulgaria
Project Type: Produced
Client: LONA est VIA
Paper: Arconvert
Print: Daga Printing House
Product Launch Location: Global
Packaging Contents: Wine
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Glass
Printing Process: Embossing, microembossing, nanoembossing, high build varnish, digital offset, serigraphy

The Project
LONA is an exciting brand new wine project from Bulgaria. In fact the full brand name of the wines is LONA est VIA and while most of the people understand that its meaning comes from Latin, only few really know what stands behind ‘Lona’.

Well it is an abbreviation between ‘Local’ and ‘Nature’ and the whole brand means Lona is the Road or in a larger sense – Lona is the Way.

This brand new wine project is started by two young enthusiasts with solid background in rose and lavender oil production – Tsveta and Tanyo. They are now aiming at producing premium local wines that reflect their amazing terroir – Sredno Gradishte Village near Chirpan. One of the best places in Bulgaria to make wines!

The Challenge
There have always been lots of challenges in my work. Lona was no exception as I was the person who had to convert a family story and a very special terroir into a memorable and meaningful wine label design. I had a feeling from the very beginning when I met Tsveta and Tanyo that I would have to make something very different and unique – a true reflection of the character of this brand new wine project.

After our first meeting Tanyo sent me plenty of photos showing moments of harvesting, landscapes, roses, lavenders, vineyards. All of them were really amazing for their beauty and colors, but what impressed me the most was the soil in the vineyards – full with smaller and larger size sharp stones everywhere. Later I learned that they are very common for Sredno Gradishte and they work as a natural air conditioner at the vineyards warming up the soil and preserving the humidity in the lower layers.

These stones were so many and randomly spread everywhere that they turned into probably the main characteristic of the local nature. I couldn’t miss that moment so I was decided to use them in my wine label design.

The Design
Stones have always had their own beauty if you want to see it but these here were kind of different. They all had different rectangular shape with sharp edges. I first wanted to use them the way they were in real in my design but then I thought – hey, these are not just stones, these are gems and nuggets. This is the real gold of local terroir!

So I started to treat them more like gold and precious stones rather than simple stones and rocks. I wanted to have different color for each wine in the range and created 6 different combinations between ink colors and hot foil colors. Now every wine looked different shining with own colors and reflections. To enhance all these reflections I used microembossing and strong embossing on every stone stamped with hotfoil, while the other that were printed with inks had raised varnish applied over them so that at the end the whole stripe looks like a 3D image especially in diverse light conditions.

My main idea was to create very attractive and colorful stripe in this wrapping labels so that one could easily remember it. I also wanted to shout that these stones are the real treasure of this amazing terroir around Sredno Gradishte village.

The top center of the label was for the ‘LONA est VIA’ heading where I used elegant combination between custom made sans serif typography and artistic cursive letters to connect LONA and VIA. I wanted to have very strong and legible heading on this wine label design but I did not want to look very simple. This is why I overprinted it with high build transparent varnish and added some extra 3D look on the letters.

Printing this design was a real challenge for my mates from Daga Printing House but they did their best to transform my digital design into crazy wine label. They also helped me a a lot in picking the right paper for this wine label – we decided to use Sorolla paper by Arconvert for its unparalleled performance on wine bottle in different conditions. It also has very smooth finish – not boring but also not aggressive – excellent canvas for my artwork!

The bottle we used is also very important – a classic bordolaise bottle with very elegant silhouette, perfect for my wrapping label.

I still feel very excited about this brand new wine project. It consumed a lot of my creative energy but after I saw the final result I really felt fully recharged as I realized that all my efforts really paid off.