OlssønBarbieri plays with Bordeaux wine rules in Château Picoron renaming

To reflect the restrictive wine regulations in France’s Bordeaux region, Norwegian studio OlssønBarbieri set themselves some constraints when coming up with a playful brand identity and packaging design for the Château Picoron winery.

Founded in 1570, Château Picoron was recently bought by an Australian family who wanted to change everything in the identity of the brand except the name. They wanted the graphics to break with Bordeaux traditions, while evoking the challenges of climate change and the future of the territory.

“Home to some of the most prestigious wines in the world and the strictest self-imposed regulations, Bordeaux has started to lose its appeal to new generations,” OlssønBarbieri said. “The goal was to create an inclusive brand identity by shaking up the region’s snobbery, making wines more fun while honoring their heritage.”

OlssønBarbieri used self-imposed constraints in her graphic design

To meet this challenge, OlssønBarbieri decided to refer to the strict rules that winemakers must follow to use the Bordeaux appellation – such as the use of particular grapes, harvesting methods and length of maturation – by imposing some of its own constraints on the design, which was shortlisted in the graphic design category of the Dezeen Awards 2022.

First, the team used just one typeface: Bourrasque from the French foundry Bureau Brut. OlssønBarbieri chose it because it can tilt 45 degrees in either direction, giving the studio plenty of room to play with shapes while creating “effortless style”.

Second, the studio decided to only use names that are palindromes (words or phrases that read the same way) for the different wines, and create meaning through this limited choice.

Photo of several white wine bottles with clean, typographic labels lying flat in the sun
The design uses a single font and the names are all palindromes

They opted for French palindromic names for the three top-of-the-range wines in the Château Picoron portfolio which have the Bordeaux appellation – Le bon Nobel, Ne de l’Eden and Mon Nom – and English for the three “youngest” and more experimental wines, Tattarrattat, Madam I’m Adam and No Lemon, No Melon.

The result are several labels that play with typography. One of the wines, Tattarrattat, has a natural fizz created by the process of carbonic maceration, so OlssønBarbieri has reflected this in the label, which sees the scattered letters as bubbles.

Photo of several bottles of red wine on a table, some wrapped in branded paper and some in a crate
The letters on the Tattarrattat label are scattered as if by fizz

In the Madam I’m Adam label, the letters lean forward and form a circle, while No Lemon, No Melon plays with negative space. The Ne de l’Éden label takes a slightly different approach in order to integrate another graphic design theme: the bird.

All wines are based on the Merlot grape, which is named after the merle merle. OlssønBarbieri therefore adopted this bird as its mascot, logo and “brand storyteller”. The Ne de l’Éden bottle features a dot-to-dot illustration of this bird.

Photo of a bottle of red wine with a dot by dot illustration of a bird on the label lying flat on the dirt floor
The Ne of Eden bottle features an illustration of a dot-to-dot bird

The illustrations are also used elsewhere, all created in collaboration with French artist Jochen Gerner. The little ones on the back of the bottle describe the winemaking constraints that have gone into this style. For example, on the Ne of Eden, the illustration focuses on minimal intervention.

It was also an opportunity to start a discussion on climate change and the future of Bordeaux wine, as OlssønBarbieri says, the hot summers of recent years have made it difficult to control the sugar level and therefore the content in wine alcohol.

“Bordeaux regulations say you can’t irrigate and you have to harvest within a certain time frame, so you’re really at the mercy of the climate and that’s what makes this wine difficult to produce, because the climate is more warmer and drier.” OlssønBarbieri managing director Henrik Olssøn told Dezeen.

“Here the illustration shows people observing and worrying about the climate itself,” he added. “For Mon Nom, we wanted to illustrate cold fermentation, with the Merle mascot dressed in leaves, and for Tattarattat, a more effervescent and almost explosive process created by carbonic maceration.”

Photo of the back of a bottle of red wine showing an illustration with various weather and grape icons in a speech bubble
The illustration on the Born of Eden bottle shows the constraints of the minimal intervention approach

As part of the rebranding, OlssønBarbieri also created a concept and brand for a new community focused on Bordeaux winemaking called Ouvroir de Vins Potentielles (OUVIPO, or “potential wine workshop”).

Founded in 2012 by Olssøn with Erika Barbieri, the studio previously created an engineering-inspired plastic-free chocolate packaging design for CF18 Chocolatier, as well as the visual identity and bottle for water brand Snåsa.

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