Butchershop Creates 'Good Wine' Category for Lawrence Wine Estates

Lawrence Wine Estates is creating a new category in the wine business with the launch of Brendel, good wine for the mass market of wine lovers who don’t ascribe to the elitism around fine wine. Butchershop, the growth and transformation agency with deep creative roots, defined the opportunity and business and has created the brand, which is now on shelves with the sell line 'purveyors of pure.'

“Most people have a casual, comfortable relationship with wine,” said Ben McNutt, chief creative officer at Butchershop. “That’s a big, clear expansion market for Lawrence Wine Estates. Good wine speaks to the heritage of Napa while appealing to the sentiment of the consumers the company and industry depend on most. While fine wine brings some people together, good wine brings everyone together.”

The Butchershop and Lawrence teams created Brendel by diving into the real-world obstacles to growing the vineyard’s business using the agency’s patented Beat Failure methodology. They found that they had an opportunity to build their brand with younger wine drinkers who care about what is in the bottle, what goes into their bodies and how the wine is produced. This market is not impressed by traditional status symbols and question everything.

“The real world has a way of undermining ideal marketing visions that are based on how we can succeed,” said Trevor Hubbard, CEO of Butchershop. “By looking honestly at how Lawrence would fail, we found the keys to disrupting the industry by creating a new category that Lawrence could credibly own.”

The agency named the brand for Lawrence Wine Estates founder Leon Brendel, who bought a small plot of land in the 1950s to make wine his way. Then they designed the products and attendant marketing, from the website and high-end video to social media and in-store assets. 

“Brendel is casual quality so we’re striking a balance,” said Ben. “’Purveyors of pure’ signals Brendel’s devotion to organic winemaking and aversion to trophy marketing. Line-drawn illustrations, the centrepiece of our social media advertising, give the brand a playfulness that breaks sharply from the self-seriousness of fine wines.”

The Brendel logo balances old and new Napa with a bold, and functional secondary wordmark in san serif that includes the year and location, which are fixtures of wine culture. The primary wordmark and logo offer a contrast, introducing an elegant serif that when paired with the secondary logo, create a layered effect that is at once relatable and refined. 

The colour palette was inspired by the colours of the valley, while remaining expansive enough to encapsulate a variety of wines and potential future product evolutions. Butchershop focused on a metallic grey, orange-red, dust green and golden hour. 

“The design uses hand-drawn illustrations seen throughout the website of Leon and his dog that spark a feeling of delight and discovery,” said Ben. “The illustrations show Leon tending to the land by picking grapes or rolling a wheelbarrow along the property and add a vintage touch to a modern brand, signalling an aspirational elegance.”

In creating the website, Butchershop shot a variety of photo and video assets. The video provides movement to the Brendel website and provides added content that will be used across social channels. In addition, the website navigation includes a variety of badges and marquees to layer motion, emulating the pace of Napa Valley, a place that can move quickly and slowly at the same time.

The Brendel Wines site was built in Wordpress. Commerce7 was used as the e-commerce API platform to integrate wine sales. PHP, Javascript, Jquery, CSS3, and HTML5 were also used in various capacities to create a dynamic experience.