A label of love

Imagine you own a wine label (neat, right?) Once you’re done daydreaming about the perks, think about the challenges you’ll face in your endeavour (aside from trying not to get high on your own supply too often). You’re one of an estimated 2468 wineries in Australia. How will you make your bottle stand out on an overcrowded bottle-shop shelf?

Story by Jake Dean.

Concepts for labels from Melanie Les of 3 Bags Full Graphic Design.

For McLaren Vale’s S.C. Pannell, one of the secrets is putting a little bit of esteemed winemaker Stephen Pannell in almost every bottle. Well, on the bottle.

The winery’s logo, which has adorned most of its wines since the first release in 2006, features a bold figure with arms raised, sprouting vines and a pair of birds from its sides.

But the motif wasn’t what Stephen Pannell initially had in mind. ‘During Stephen’s first meetings with Melanie Les, a friend and talented artist and graphic designer, he was laying all his ideas out on the floor and flailing his arms all about excitedly,’ S.C. Pannell’s Tom Grant explains. ‘But when Melanie came back, she produced this almost-Aztec crossed with Mambo-style sketch of a little man and Stephen said: ‘Well, what’s that?’ ‘And she said; ‘that’s you, you idiot!’.’

The logo, which aimed to capture Stephen’s hands-on, hands-in-thedirt approach, has become a tad smaller on the label since, but has otherwise remained very similar.

What changes regularly, however, is the situation mini-Stephen often finds itself in, particularly on the labels of its most vivid and heavily illustrated range. ‘On the Basso (grenache) label, for example, Steve is under the ground because it’s a low-sulphur, minimal intervention, earthy kind of a wine,’ Tom explains. ‘Whereas the tempranillo is a party and the rosé is in a rose garden. On the fiano label is actually Steve’s wife, Fiona, and she’s in the ocean as a mermaid, representing McLaren Vale by the sea if you like.’

Tom says the design process behind this range (which features less copy than the others because the artwork tells much of the story) is complicated because ‘that’s the way Stephen’s mind works.’ But he says whimsy is a mainstay of the range’s aesthetic — influenced perhaps by Stephen’s love of Wes Anderson films. ‘If we decide a wine’s going to be in that first (artwork heavy) range, Steve and I will argue about what that might look like for six months,’ Tom says. ‘Then, we take it to Mel to interpret those ideas and it’s a back-andforth to get the colours right. Colours are really important to us, and the texture. Again, there’s lots of back-and-forth (until) eventually we’ll have a meeting of the minds and settle on it. That whole process can take nine months. It’s a bit like birth — Steve gives birth and I have to raise them!’

The artwork on the bottle is striking, colourful and distinct.

From concept to completion.

S.C. Pannell’s other ranges feature more subdued labels, where splashes of colour and words take on more meaning. ‘There’s a range of wines we call ‘place’ and they’re a lot simpler,’ Tom says of the labels that feature a charcoal background and a logo coloured to represent the wine inside. ‘The copy becomes very important; there’s power in words and fonts, which takes a lot of time to get right. The copy on these wines always starts with a simple statement: ‘The truly wondrous thing about wine is that it speaks of where it comes from’. After that, a story begins as to why it comes from a certain place’.

Another range, focused on blending, features coloured labels and a similarly subdued logo, with the copy hinting at more of Stephen and Tom’s inspirations. ‘It talks about what we think the wine should be drunk with, food-wise, and also what should be listened to,’ Tom explains. ‘Steve and I do talk about wine and business, obviously, but most of the time we’re talking about books, music and cooking; three things that are really important to us.’

Being a relative pup, at least compared to some of McLaren Vale’s old-wine dynasties, you could forgive S.C. Pannell for resorting to zaniness or marketing gimmicks on its labels. Bottle shops are filled with younger brands trying to stand out on the shelf among more established rivals, overcompensating for their lack of history. So, it’s perhaps curious that S.C. Pannell has barely changed its logo or label design principles since the first release in 2006.

Not so curious, though, when you consider Stephen’s pedigree, respect within the industry and a mantlepiece filled with prestigious awards. It’s this track record that eliminates any concerns about what other labels are putting on the shelves. ‘We don’t think about what other people are doing,’ Tom says. ‘That’s a cliché, but if you look at who Steve is: that he’s the son of Bill Pannell, that as a sevenyear-old boy he helped plant Moss Wood in Margaret River with his father, his family has owned estates in Burgundy – he’s got more accolades than nearly any other winemaker in Australia. We talk about not caring what others are doing because people are looking at us, rather than us looking at them, and while it might sound arrogant to say that, it’s true.’

Indeed, as the Halliday Wine Companion notes, ‘The future for Pannell is limitless, the icon status of the label already established.’ The only question that remains is where that little icon, flailing arms and all, is going to turn up next?