Utzinger NV Cuvee Brut
A limited edition label for one of the Tamar Valley's most thoughtful winemaker,. including custom illustration, gold foiling, and a tight deadline before Festivale.
Matthias and Lauren Utzinger make wine the long way. Their vineyard in Legana overlooks the kanamaluka (the Tamar River) on the western side of the valley, planted in 2018 on rich, dolerite-strewn soil that Matthias describes as elemental. He came from Switzerland. Lauren grew up here. Their philosophy is simple and uncompromising: they are vignerons. Their wines are grown, not made.
When the opportunity came to produce a limited edition NV Cuvee Brut ahead of Festivale, one of Tasmania’s premier food and drink festivals, they wanted a label that held up to the wine inside it.
The brief was to weave Matthias’s Swiss heritage into a custom illustration, bring it to life with gold foil, and land it on a stock worthy of the attention to detail that defines everything Utzinger does. The timeline was tight.
We developed a custom illustration drawing on the Utzinger family crest, a mark that speaks to Matthias’s Swiss roots without feeling antiquated. The illustration sits at the heart of the label, framed by the understated typographic language already established in the Utzinger brand. Nothing was overworked. The restraint was the point.
The label stock was Manter Cotone Bianco Ultra from Spicers, a 100% cotton paper with a natural, tactile quality that rewards the hand as much as the eye, and engineered specifically for the demands of wine labelling. Black ink on cotton, finished with gold foil. The combination is quiet until it isn’t.
The NV Cuvee sold out at Festivale. Which, for a limited edition, is exactly the outcome.
It’s the kind of project that reminds us why the details matter. The right stock, the right finish, the right stor, each decision small, the sum of them anything but.
Credits
Production by Abel Labels – Hobart, Tasmania’s
Photography by Ryan Farrington at Sileo Media, Launceston’s food and beverage photographer.
