Kim Pullen and his team at Church & State Wines have been a marvel to watch as they have artfully carved out their brilliant brand to best represent its diversity and culture over the past decade. From their original winery on Vancouver Island, where they also have a Bistro on the vineyard, the Pullens expanded to their Oliver vineyards in the Okanagan, where they built a captivating wine tasting room surrounded by vines and desertscape. From here, they now offer two unique and exciting brands to describe their two faces of wines: elegant and fun.
New to launch this summer is the Signature Series featuring hand drawn scripts that depict the skill and craftsmanship that went into making each of these wines.
John Pullen, marketing director explains, “The project is a really interesting complement to our Lost Inhibitions series, which also is rooted completely in typography, but with a completely different effect. These new (Signature Series) labels are like a person’s signature that they’ve spent a lifetime perfecting, where Lost Inhibitions’ lettering is a bright stream of consciousness.” The Lost Inhibitions Series, if you have somehow not heard or seen this new line of controversially fun labels, were launched in 2015 and uproariously embraced by the wine consumers, with bottles flying off the shelves in every genre. This was an eye-opening example of the diversity of our modern wine culture and an extraordinary business model for successful wine marketing. Who was behind this? You guessed it: Bernie Hadley-Beauregard and his team, who worked closely with John and C & S to build this explosive new branding.
From fun, on to elegance. The Signature Series is a directly opposite wine experience than the Lost Inhibitions Series, but as John mentioned, makes the perfect complement in being so. John explains, “We began the project last summer again with the Brandever team. The concept of the new designs was to interpret each of our premium and super-premium blends and varietals as unique, calligraphic signatures. Each script draws on the flavour, texture, body and style of the wines; essentially, creating a unique signature for our wines. All the scripts were created by Jackson Alves, a prominent calligrapher based in Brazil. He describes himself as a letterer, calligrapher and teacher. With over 15 years of experience, his lettering style is shaped by fluid and graceful curves, bold style choices and a keen eye for aesthetics. Alves was also awarded the 10th Graphic Design Biennial in Brazil in 2013, as well as the co-founder of the lettering and mural collective Criatipos.”
As with everything this winery does, this choice has been thoughtfully made, and has meaning. John says, “The parallels between calligraphy and penmanship, and winemaking are incredibly strong. Each are built around traditional craftsmanship and incredible attention to detail. Furthermore, Alves begins each script with traditional mediums such as pen or brush, and then perfects each piece digitally, which really speaks to our winemaking philosophy of creating traditional, handcrafted wines, perfected with cutting edge technology.”
(Pictured: Proprietor Kim Pullen)
~ Jennifer Schell