The Sounding Series is a new range of small batch spirits from Retribution Distilling. A brave exploration into the world of spirits flavours, testing new, wild variations that haven’t necessarily been explored before.

Soundings are where ships test the sea bed. These are small samples to check the status of the sea bed material. Like these soundings these drinks are small but brave tests in flavourings for spirits, they are limited runs and quite exotic flavours.

The design and illustrations take a strong cue from old ships maps that were decorated with obscure sea monsters and such. Cartographers drew sea monsters to enchant viewers while educating them about what could be found in the sea. The sea monsters that populated European medieval and renaissance imaginations—fierce-toothed animals battling in the waves, long serpents wrapped around ships, torturously beautiful sirens and a wide assortment of chimeric beings.

Like these sea monsters we wanted to draw people in to the possibilities of flavours spirits, the uncharted matchings. We created fun and engaing illustrations to draw the consumer in; from voyagers out at sea floating on a cocktail umbrella, ships firing juniper berries to lemon rind sea monsters. These reflected the fun and adventurous approach to these limited drinks. Names of seas and coves take form from ingredients and local areas of the brand.

The labels are designed to allow the brand to overprint each flavour allowing one lables for all of their future drinks.