Gallo’s Turning Leaf Gets Makeover
From Financial Times:
Napa Valley, the seat of California’s wine industry, is not exactly a fashion mecca. The pastoral towns dotted around the vineyards are more Buddhist than Burberry, more caps-’n’-culottes than Chanel. So slightly tipsy heads turned from cellars to catwalks when it was recently announced that Basso & Brooke, British designers known for their use of fabric decorated with pornographic prints, had been appointed “designers in residence” to Turning Leaf, E&J Gallo’s traditional wine brand.
Basso & Brooke will create the wrapping for 2,000 bottles, curate a blog, design some limited-edition umbrellas and a retail installation for a London department store.
Turning Leaf could use the help. “This isn’t seen as a fashionable wine, at least in the UK,” admitted designer Christopher Brooke. The winemakers clearly hope that working with Basso & Brooke will change all that. For their part, Brooke says, it’s more about profile-raising and “the press aspect than making it commercially available”.
The bottle of Turning Leaf chardonnay shrink-wrapped in a sleeve patterned on Basso & Brooke’s spring/summer 2010 collection, features snow leopard fur, erupting volcanoes, roses and psychedelic patterns.
Does the bottle make you want to buy the wine?
Tags: chardonnay, fashion, gallo, turning leaf
