Your spirit’s bottle carries a huge responsibility: the first impression that many people will have of your brand. Granted, the liquid has to be great to motivate those second, third, 10th, and 20th purchases. But the first one? That’s usually based on packaging.
Yet packaging can be immensely expensive. That puts your typical small distillery in a catch-22 bind: You need effective packaging to make sales, but you can’t afford to custom-design visionary bottles to fulfill their every aesthetic dream and crush the shelf-crowding competition.
“We’re a craft distillery that can’t afford loss-making operations,” says Umberto Luchini, cofounder of Wolf Spirit Distillery in Eugene, Oregon. “The glass itself tends to be the biggest expense in packaging spirit brands, so a proprietary bottle wasn’t an option [for us] from the start.”
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Most distilleries limit themselves to ordering off-the-shelf packaging. However, that doesn’t mean their finished bottles have to hit bars and store shelves looking just like all the rest. It’s a simple perspective flip: You’re not stuck with stock packaging; instead, you’re taking advantage of stock packaging as a blank canvas.
You can turn stock bottles into something that represents your brand and your spirit; you can make them look premium, and you can make them stand out next to other brands. To get there, it helps to know exactly what your brand aesthetic is and why, how to balance big goals with budgets, how to work with a designer, and what customizations—from ribbons and hang tags to custom closures to gold foil—actually make sense for your product.
Here, to help navigate this process, we speak with award-winning brands and designers who’ve transformed stock bottles to distinctive, impactful packaging.
Hinterhaus in Arnold, California
The spirits of Hinterhaus are memorably striking—the distillery’s North Grove Vodka took gold in the American Craft Spirit Association’s fourth annual Craft Spirits Packaging Awards; their overall portfolio took silver. The bottles have a sleek, squared finish, and dual-sided back labels project thematic artwork through to the bottle’s front—a presentation that’s especially high-impact for clear spirits.
For founders Nate Randall and Bonnie Boglioli-Randall, their distillery’s packaging starts with its ethos.
“We’re in the Sierra Nevada mountains … surrounded by ski resorts and alpine lakes and rugged mountaintops,” Boglioli-Randall says. “We have family in the Alps and wanted to play into the alpine-like area we’re in here.”
The name Hinterhaus reflects the couple’s heritage as well as the distillery’s setting and spirits—and, as Boglioli-Randall says, it sets them apart from all the colonial and Wild West themes we see in American spirits branding today. She says she found inspiration in skiing posters from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s that had “freshness and modernity,” even for their time.
To capture that retro-contemporary dichotomy, Boglioli-Randall says she chose squared bottles from Berlin Packaging and got to work with locally based Justin Page Design; the Randalls have partnered with Page since launching the distillery. Page says the bottle worked for the mid-century look that Randall and Boglioli-Randall wanted—and, being square, it wasn’t standard-looking. That led to design challenges, he says, but it ultimately pushed the aesthetic in a unique direction.
“You have this finite square to work within,” Page says. “Suddenly, proportion is a huge factor. You’re going to have these names and terms like ‘cask finish’ and ‘American single malt’—this language you have to include where the TTB is concerned. … There are logistical things to consider.”
Page helped the Randalls create a systematic blueprint within which they could label every spirit with the right information in the right places, giving their portfolio cohesiveness yet with opportunities to differentiate each product. North Grove Vodka’s label features giant sequoia trees—the distillery is less than a mile from one of the last surviving sequoia groves on earth—while South Grove Gin features dogwood blossoms. Both are things that bring people to the area, so these labels strike a chord of recognition with locals and visitors alike.
One key takeaway: If you choose a less common bottle shape like theirs, Boglioli-Randall says, be prepared to order the largest quantities you can each time. “Not a lot of us are using that bottle, so not a lot are being made,” she says, “and sometimes you go to order it, and it’s out of stock for eight-and-a-half months,” More broadly, she says distilleries should think about how they can communicate their identities via packaging that will stand out from the others.
“Our double-sided label begs people to pick bottles up.” Anecdotally, she says, “once someone picks up a bottle in retail, they’re much more likely to put it in their cart.”
In terms of where to spend and where to save, Boglioli-Randall says they’ve identified the points where the splurge is worth it. Their clear spirits get waterproof labels because the Randalls don’t want those labels disintegrating in someone’s freezer or ice chest. “It would reflect poorly on our brand,” she says, while thoughtful details can boost people’s impression of that brand. “Someone will be like, ‘Wow, if they pay this much attention to the label, they must be paying a lot of attention to what’s in the bottle.”
These packaging-design decisions have proven to be crucial for the Randalls. They opened in 2020 with no plans to distribute, but then pandemic restrictions limited what they could do in their tasting room—they couldn’t even pour one-ounce samples.
“If there was ever a time to amplify our packaging and spend per unit, this was it,” she says. “We were asking people to buy the product before even trying it.”
And that’s how all brands should think of their packaging, Boglioli-Randall says. First-time customers “have no idea who you are or what your product tastes like. You have to tell that story to everyone.”
That doesn’t mean you need to do anything “outrageous or frivolous,” she says. But by analyzing each possible detail—such as those dual-sided, waterproof labels—and whether it makes sense for what you want to communicate to that customer.
Image: Courtesy Wolf Spirit
Wolf Spirit in Eugene, Oregon
Wolf Spirit’s approach is to balance a recognizable, cohesive look for most of its portfolio with distinctive, one-off products.
Matte black blends into glowing amber on the classic, bulbous bottles for their Puncher’s Chance bourbons, while printed-on-glass labels evoke early 20th century boxing. The bottle for Mr. Pickles Gin, a Craft Spirits Packaging Awards gold-medal winner, is its own animal—an eye-catching mashup of Victorian London aesthetics with a playful sensibility.
“The brief for Mr. Pickles Gin was deliberately straightforward,” Luchini says. “It was to differentiate itself from competitors by challenging the historical and stereotypical perceptions of gin brands. Instead of emulating the traditional, regal, or conservative leaders, Mr. Pickles aims to offer a quirky and unexpected take, one that embodies the grungy, eccentric, humorous, and often misunderstood character of the Pacific Northwest, where Wolf Spirit is based.”
The foundation is an Osaka-style bottle from Verallia. It’s wide and round with a tiered top. Luchini says he chose that bottle because it’s comfortable to hold and has a smooth, contoured, graceful silhouette “that creates an intriguing contrast with the strong, masculine personality represented by the dog.” The bottle is a Mediterranean Sea shade of blue, vaguely reminiscent of Bombay Sapphire but vibrant enough to stand alone as a modern update.
To customize it, Wolf Spirit worked with the same design team with whom they’ve collaborated since starting the business. Luchini praises the team’s vision and ability to bring specific aesthetic goals to life—but he also emphasizes that “designers are as good as the brief. As the saying goes, ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ Focus and attention to the brief needs to be the utmost priority.”
Confidence in what Wolf Spirit wanted Mr. Pickles to evoke guided their work with designers, balancing budget with customization. The goal was “to evoke feelings of happiness, joy, and optimism,” Luchini says, as they walk a line between presenting a premium product and not going so high-end that the message is lost.
“For a $30 bottle of gin named after our phenomenal Mr. Pickles, there’s no need to get too fancy,” he says. “This brand represents absurd optimism—we’re putting a pit bull named Mr. Pickles front and center on a bottle—not luxurious sophistication.”
There are two steps involved in producing the label: There’s a screen-printed floral design encircling the bottle, while they apply a high-quality, pressure-sensitive label for the golden-framed image of Mr. Pickles himself. “This method, though complex at industrial production level, proves to be a worthwhile investment,” Luchini says. “The result is one of the most striking package designs in the market, maintaining an overall appearance of simplicity.”
They punctuated the look with a golden cap to tie into the frame, “creating a cohesive visual experience.” They also chose a simple screw cap to “maintain a lighter feel and ensure it doesn’t detract from the label’s impact.”
Photo: Matt Ray Photography/Courtesy End of Days
End of Days in Wilmington, North Carolina
End of Days Distillery won silver at the the Craft Spirits Packaging Awards for its Castillo 1815, a blue agave spirit that the distillery wants to highlight while maintaining its connection to the rest of the portfolio.
Its straightforward, rounded-top bottle with wood-capped cork closure is consistent across the End of Days repertoire. However, cofounder Shane Faulkner and head of marketing Evan Faulkner say they wanted to tell the spirit’s singular story while giving the liquid the premium look it deserved.
While End of Days doesn’t call Castillo 1815 tequila because it’s not distilled in Mexico, they make it with premium ingredients imported from Mexico, with no sugars or additives. To build on the End of Days aesthetic while celebrating this blue agave spirit, they chose a blue palette with an embossed ribbon at the top. The label is foil-finished and richly textured with a tonal tattoo-inspired pattern that incorporates thematic “Easter eggs”—such as bats, which pollinate agave plants.
They worked with Wilmington-based branding and design agency Creature Theory to effectively convey all that information—not technically tequila but with Mexican elements, hand-distilled, premium—in simple, striking packaging.
The Faulkners say they’ve developed a great working partnership with Creature Theory founder and chief creative director Matt Ebbing. “After four years of working together,” Shane says, “I can have an idea in my head, and he can extract it through a few questions.”
Ebbing says there’s no reason why small distilleries can’t begin with commonly available bottles and then make them into something distinctive. “When we think about game-changing package design, sticking to a stock bottle isn’t nearly as limiting as you might think,” he says. “There are so many ways to bring your brand story to life beyond the physical shape of the bottle—I mention story quite intentionally, as that’s where great package design begins.”
Your brand’s story as well as the legal requirements on labels will set parameters for the design. “The better you know the rules, the easier it is to ensure [mandatory elements] are met without becoming blemishes on a design,” Ebbing says. From there, the sky’s the limit, and good designers are what unlock those options most effectively.
“A great design team that’s well connected to bottle decorators—think label printers, bottle screen-printers, closure suppliers, etcetera—is like a carpenter showing up to a job site with an epic tool chest,” Ebbing says. “Label work isn’t just visual design but often involves specifying a special paper stock for its unique texture, leveraging metallic foil for a premium touch, creating custom label shapes for a dramatic impression, and even employing tactile UV finishes and embossing to affect the physical feel of design elements.”
When it comes to harnessing those seemingly limitless options into something that fits a distillery’s budget, Creature Theory advises clients that special finishes and add-ons should support a specific design concept or sales objective—otherwise, it could be just a slippery slope to gratuitous or cliché accents.
“Double down on what’s authentic to your brand and product,” Ebbing says. “Focus on the special bits you can’t imagine not leveraging.”
Case in point: For End of Days’ vodka, gin, and rum bottles, Creature Theory printed different segments of the Wilmington riverfront on reverse-print labels. The scenery shines through the back of the bottle—and if you line up the different spirits, you can see the entire downtown riverfront.
That customization makes a huge impact with End of Days’ consumers, Ebbing says. “We’re told that pointing this out during distillery tours is often cited as a highlight by customers.”
