“We never realised how much influence they would have,” says Stephanie Tscheppe-Eselböck of the renowned Austrian winery Gut Oggau, about the unorthodox labels that she and her husband, Eduard Tscheppe, created for their wine bottles in 2007. “At first, people said, ‘Are you crazy? How can you put faces on the labels? They’re not even smiling. Isn’t it a bit creepy?’”
But the idea – to represent their characterful wines as members of a boisterous family – stuck fast and now Gut Oggau’s labels grab attention on wine shelves around the world. “We’ve had a lot of copycats,” laughs Eduard.
Traditionally, labels have been vehicles for information, foregrounding producer, place, grape and year, with images of chateaux or vineyards very much in the background.
Now, in tandem with the rise of artisanal, low-intervention winemaking, labels are becoming brighter and more playful, relying on pictures more than words to convey the character of the liquid in the bottle. Some are maximalist, daubing the space with punk-style collages and slogans, while others reduce their branding to a basic signature, an abstract design – or a family of faces.
“Things are opening up – styles of wines, philosophies, labelling,” says Eduard. “And why not? On the one hand it’s a good evolution. On the other hand, some of the wines and labels are perhaps a little too playful – just there to get attention and provoke. For us, it’s not about being different. In the end, the quality of the wine needs to be perfect. The label is secondary to that.”
