Cases

Wine Labels on Grape Waste Material Leads to Success

Storm King Wine Co. is a new venture from established winemakers located in the Granite Belt, Australia, who were after a unique and sustainable label that reflected the winemaking techniques, they use to make wines full of texture and flavour.

The labels were printed digitally in four colour process plus white, on the unique Grape Waste material. The client reviewed a range of our sustainable materials before settling on Grape Waste, an uncoated paper that contains 15% recycled content via grape waste sourced from wine production to create a natural fleck appearance. This was the perfect fit for the wine label brief.

A suite of embellishments were applied to create the desired look, with the design including a prominent ‘paint brush stroke’ element. This was created by adding a glossy high build screen over a textured emboss to create both the texture of the brush strokes and the look of paint. The high build was also applied to the vintage and variant, and a sandpaper varnish applied to the background for additional texture.

Digital was the ideal choice for running this label, which was a short run requirement across 3 varieties so therefore setup waste was minimised. The labels were ganged three across the web so we could reduce the tooling costs for the customer, rather than print the run as three separate items. The Indichrome inks used were perfect for the uncoated porous nature of the material, producing dense and vibrant colours. Plus, the inks are certified for both home and industrial compostability.

An award-winning result

The effort that went into these labels was not done in vain – the 2021 Shiraz Malbec variety won the award for Excellence in Sustainability at the Digital Labels & Packaging Awards 2022. The recognition was for being a digitally printed job that have exemplary environmental credentials.