It's time to disrupt the wine category...
Introducing Wayward wines – a new concept for wine that defies typical category cues and shuns industry snobbishness. No region, no year, no individual grape. Just beautifully blended wines in a spectrum of bold, distinctive flavours.
Well that’s the idea anyway.
Never the type to sit on our hands, Wayward wines came to be after witnessing a rather awkward exchange in a wine shop. After asking the assistant for help with a gift, the customer was met with a bamboozlement of knowledge on grape, region and year. They left shortly after, empty handed and disappointed, while the assistant was left without a sale. Clearly the approach didn’t resonate, but it much different to how the rest of wine is operating?
This is a category crying out for some much needed disruption. A trip down the wine aisle will find you lost in a sea of sameness, flooded with information that doesn’t mean a great deal (unless you’re the ‘cellar full of Gran Reserva’ type). Whether you simplify your decision by colour, price or how pleasing you find the logo to be, the fact remains that most wines feel inaccessible. They fail to communicate to a wider audience and final choice (more often than not) comes down to either habit or whim.
It only takes a quick look towards the other, craftier side of the booze aisle to see the benefit of tapping in to the needs and values of a more considerate and demanding breed of consumer. One that may not be the biggest drinker, but is prepared to pay for their alcohol (as long as it’s quality). By drawing on lessons learned from the craft beer and spirit revolution and applying a bit of strategic challenger thinking, we created Wayward Wines. An expressive, accessible brand of wine, positioned to bring some relevance back to a stuffy category.
No name, just flavour; each wine’s identity is dictated by its own unique blend of tasting notes. Bold colour ways, texture and expressive, hand illustrated lines all work together to give consumers an instant hit of what each wine will taste like. We kept the overarching identity clean and contemporary, using it to pull the range together with only a simple brand marque visible from shelf view. We wanted to take the pomp and pretence out of the decision-making process and design a range that could be shopped purely on taste.
This is not wine for the connoisseurs and their cellars. This is for the many who drink to enjoy, not to brag. And it seems to be an idea that resonates. What started as an exercise in disruption, has now grown legs as a viable business opportunity. We’ve been in talks with a couple of wineries already looking to explore bringing the concept to life. Let's see what happens...
