Natural Wine Label Art

• Give the front of the label to one hand-made picture (a cartoon animal, a line-drawn face, a doodle) on a plain white or cream ground, and let it sell the bottle instead of the estate, the appellation and the vintage.
• Keep the drawing untrained or deliberately naive: crayon, felt pen, pencil or watercolour by the grower, their children or friends, or by a professional who keeps that amateur hand; avoid anything that looks agency-made.
• Write the cuvée name by hand in the same line as the picture, or set it small in a plain sans, and keep the producer, region and legal mentions quiet and secondary.
• Give every cuvée its own picture or character, so that a range reads as a cast (a family of faces, a menagerie, one mascot in different scenes) rather than one house layout with the names changed.
• Prefer humour, wordplay and invented characters to heritage: no crest, no engraved château, no gold foil, no ornamental border.

The natural (low-intervention) wine scene. The movement took shape in Beaujolais around the oenologist Jules Chauvet and growers such as Marcel Lapierre, settled into a modern concept among French growers, restaurateurs and wine shops in the 1990s and spread abroad in the 2000s. Its best-known illustrator is the French cartoonist Michel Tolmer, whom a US importer calls the 'unofficial lead artist of the French natural wine movement since the 1990s': he illustrated Pierre Jancou's Vin vivant (2011), wrote and drew the comic tasting manual Mimi, Fifi & Glouglou (2013) and draws the labels of the Loire négoce Les Athlètes du Vin. From the late 2000s small growers in France, Catalonia, Campania, Burgenland, the Finger Lakes and the Adelaide Hills, sold through natural-wine bars, shops and importers as far as Brooklyn and photographed for Instagram, turned the front label into a personal picture. Gut Oggau in Burgenland, bought by Stephanie and Eduard Tscheppe-Eselböck in 2007, whose labels won a Gold Lion for packaging design at Cannes in 2009, is the best-known polished case; Punch (2021), following Alice Feiring, calls it 'a kind of second generation of natural wine' after 'the wild id of the early days of the movement'. The 2007 start marks Gut Oggau's first vintage, the earliest label series the sources date securely; Tolmer's drawings for the scene since the 1990s are its precursors. A designed strand shares the scene but not the naive hand and is left out here: Gabrio Bini's arrow-shaped label taken from a marble lamp he designed, Milan Nestarec's labels by the Czech studio Visualist, Vivanterre's cut-paper shapes by Apartamento Studios after Gaetano Pesce, Werlitsch's single monochrome logo with a few sparse words, and the lone word 'Dope' on Claus Preisinger's blaufränkisch rosé.

1. Abigail Glasgow, 'Go Ahead and Judge Natural Wine by Its Label', AIGA Eye on Design (5 April 2021): on Gut Oggau, Superglou's drunken-cat mascot, Vinca Minor, Bloomer Creek (drawings from the founder's childhood, a sketch of the owners' dog Otie, a doodle by their friend Jimmy Wright), Vivanterre and Jenny & François; 'These wine labels are being created by people who don't know typefaces or design trends' (Katherine Clary); 'Social media made wine a visual art for the first time' (Marissa Ross); 'sophisticated cartoons, kindergarten-esque drawings, and grocery store list doodles': https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/go-ahead-and-judge-natural-wine-by-its-label/
2. Jordan Michelman, 'About That Natural Wine Label', Punch (7 January 2021): on Gut Oggau and Jung von Matt, Alice Feiring ('This is where things grow up and stop being so punk rock'; Gut Oggau as 'a kind of second generation of natural wine'), Milan Nestarec and Visualist, Jauma (Erskine 'himself is the designer', his children Audrey and Danby assisting), Gabrio Bini, Philippe Bornard, Laureano Serres and Domaine des Sablonnettes: https://punchdrink.com/articles/about-that-natural-wine-label-bini-gut-oggau-nestarec/
3. Megan Krigbaum, 'Meet This Austrian Winery's "Family of Wines"', Punch (18 October 2016): Gut Oggau's first vintage in 2007 and its black-and-white, line-drawn portraits drawn from written descriptions of each wine: https://punchdrink.com/articles/meet-gut-oggau-wine-portraits-austria-family-of-wines/
4. Gut Oggau, home page ('2007 haben wir Gut Oggau gekauft'; 'Weine mit Gesichtern'; Jaime Hayón 'hat unserer Weinfamilie neue Gesichter gezeichnet'): https://www.gutoggau.com/
5. Cannes Lions archive (LoveTheWork), 'Gut Oggau Wine Bottles & Wine Box', Jung von Matt, Vienna, Gold, Design > Packaging Design, 2009: https://lovethework.com/work-awards/entries/gut-oggau-wine-bottles-wine-box-304015
6. Josh Fehnert, 'Indie labels' (Wine Label Design: How Indie Brands Win Shelf Space), Monocle 163 (May 2023): Jutta Ambrositsch, 'Today, the natural-wine sector has developed a global design language'; Dan Keeling, 'If it looks like it's been done by an agency, that's a big no-no'; Bruno Duchêne's La Luna label, 'which looks like it was drawn with wax crayons by a child'; Jonas Mosesson's labels for Cantina Giardino; Werlitsch's 'same monochrome logo and a few sparse, often esoteric, words'; Claus Preisinger's 'Dope' label: https://monocle.com/food-drink/wine-recommendations/wine-label-design-indie-brands/
7. Wikipedia, 'Natural wine' (Beaujolais origins, Jules Chauvet, the 'Gang of Four', Vin Méthode Nature 2020): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_wine
8. Wikipédia, 'Vin naturel' (the modern concept formed in the 1990s among French growers, restaurateurs and wine shops; international spread in the 2000s; no legislation defines the term, and the law forbids tying 'nature' or 'naturel' directly to 'vin'; 'Vin méthode nature' is a private mark whose charter the DGCCRF validated in March 2020): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_naturel
9. Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogue: Michel Tolmer (author of the text), Petit traité de dégustation, in the series Mimi, Fifi & Glouglou (Paris: Éditions de l'Épure, 2013; https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb43704170h) and Pierre Jancou, Vin vivant: portraits de vignerons au naturel, illustrated by Michel Tolmer (Paris: Alternatives, 2011; https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb427587345)
10. Mollat bookshop, Michel Tolmer, Mimi, Fifi & Glouglou: a short treatise on tasting, shelved as 'Humour BD Adulte', an 'album' following three characters: https://www.mollat.com/livres/2040428/michel-tolmer-mimi-fifi-et-glouglou-a-short-treatise-on-tasting
11. Context Wines (US importer), 'Les Athletes du Vin': 'The labels for Les Athletes du Vin are created by the French artist Michel Tolmer': https://contextwines.com/collections/les-athletes-du-vin
12. Leon & Son, '2019 Cantina Giardino Vino Rosso': labels 'designed for the di Grutollas by an artist friend', among them 'a dragon sipping a glass of red while sitting on a barrel', known as Drogone: https://leonandsonwine.com/collections/red-wine/products/2019-cantina-giardino-vino-rosso-1-5l-magnum-campania-italy
13. MYSA, 'Importer Profile: Super Glou' (an importer of 'small-production, low-intervention wines'): https://mysa.wine/pages/importer/super-glou
14. Producer locations: Primal Wine, 'Bruno Duchêne La Luna Blanc' ('Bruno resides in Banyuls-sur-Mer on the Côte Vermeille'): https://primalwine.com/products/bruno-duchene-la-luna-blanc-natural-wine; Bowler Wine, 'Bloomer Creek' (Kim Engle and Debra Bermingham, Finger Lakes, New York): https://www.bowlerwine.com/producer/bloomer-creek

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