Upper Shirley Vineyards Wine

Agency: Watermark Design
Project Type: Produced, Commercial Work
Client: Upper Shirley Vineyards
Location: Charles City, VA USA
Packaging Contents: Wine
Packaging Materials: Paper

In 2014, the Upper Shirley Vineyards team embraced their land’s farming heritage by beginning to create artisan wines. When Upper Shirley approached Watermark Design, they were seeking a clean, classic, and modern brand identity and packaging system for their new winery.

Watermark developed a brand inspired by classic American style, and the proprietor’s passion for Polo. The logo design features a stripe traditionally used in the sport of Polo, as the primary mark. From the logo, we continued to develop the brand identity with a color palette of royal blue (reflecting the property’s view of the James River), a bright red, and a classic gray.

Watermark then designed a three tier wine label system. The brand’s royal blue logo stripe plays a large part in the wine label designs. The first tier is accessibly-priced, and includes a red and white blend, numbered 1 and 2 respectively, mirroring the positions and game shirts worn in Polo. The classic (middle) tier was designed using the same blue stripe, but displaces it off-center to create a cleaner more minimal aesthetic. Lastly, the reserve tier utilizes a slender vertical label and introduces the colors black and gold into the color palette, elevating it’s status and prestige.

What’s Unique?
As the system moves toward the reserve wines, the label sizes move accordingly toward a more refined simplification, but also start to incorporate foils to signify the raising of the bar for the wine inside. A bold design and color palette allow this system to sing on-shelf.