Launched in 2015, Coulter Wines may be young by the standards of South Australia’s world-renowned Barossa Valley wine region, but the label has already garnered much praise, not to mention awards from the revered James Halliday Australian Wine Companion.

Coulter Wines vintner, Chris Coulter, takes the winemaking process very seriously and correctly sensed the need for the label’s branding to reflect his pursuit of quality.

Chris approached us to expand on their core range of wines with a group of experimental offerings; a minimal intervention range focused on cleanliness and purity. We’d already worked with Chris to design and categorise his wines in numerical order using large C1, C2, and C3 batch markers for each new release.

The new C4 wines were to be the product of experimentation; natural, contemporary and evolving, inspired by Louis Pasteur’s belief that ‘it is characteristic of experimental science that it opens ever-widening horizons to our vision’.

The large C4 batch marker is consistent with the core range, this time subtly using various print effects such as blind embossing and high builds to differentiate the multiple C4’s from one another. The labels needed to be designed to easily allow a change in variety and region from vintage to vintage. Text details are spread over the label and connected by hairlines, suggesting a mapped out or sketched process that, although built upon years of knowledge and experience, requires a fine balance when merged with the excitement and unknowns of experimentation.