Penfolds and Nigo collaboration sells out in 90 minutes
The union of Australia’s most famous winemaker and a revered Japanese fashion designer is highly surprising. But their decision to reimagine the labels on a bottle recognised the world over is even more so.
A mischievous mind, one unbothered by trivialities such as the constraints of time and space, brings together two very different men from vastly different worlds.
The casual observer struggles to see common ground but dig deeper and it’s there.
One is a man born in the Barossa Valley of solid Lutheran stock in the early days of the Great War. His hair is oiled in the fashion of the day and controlled by a disciplined comb. He’s never seen without a neatly knotted tie and no cardigan ever felt unwelcome draped across his shoulders.
The other is a streetwear legend, a shaper of trends, a DJ and record producer. He hangs with Pharrell Williams and Kanye West.
Believe it or not, they are bound by a bottle of wine.
This article is in the March issue of WISH magazine available in Friday’s edition of The Australian
The older man is Max Schubert, the winemaker who bucked the convention of the day to create Australia’s most famous wine, Penfolds Grange.
The younger is Nigo, creative director of Human Made, artistic director of Kenzo, streetwear trailblazer and genuine polymath. And the man tasked with showing the world Schubert’s legendary creation in a whole new light.
When Penfolds announced a two-year creative collaboration with Nigo in 2023, it marked a significant moment in the transformation of Penfolds from simply Australia’s most famous winemaker to a global luxury brand.
Nigo’s first collaboration with Penfolds is a range of wines called One by Nigo, drawn from Australian, French and American vineyards and reflecting the winemaker’s ever-expanding global reach.
The launch was accompanied by a collection of highly limited streetwear pieces reflecting the Nigo-designed wine labels with price tags that, if applied to wine buying, could start a small cellar.
They sold out globally within 90 minutes.
Emboldened by that success, Nigo’s next Penfolds project set him loose on the winemaker’s most celebrated piece of iconography.
Last month the collaboration delivered Grange by Nigo
The labels that adorn the company’s flagship wine, Grange, are arguably the most recognisable in Australian wine.
After early vintages where the wine’s still-experimental status was reflected in very sparse labels that were little more than the basic identifiers used for sample bottles headed for the tasting bench, the label that most would identify with Grange emerged in the early 1960s. The word Hermitage was removed in 1990 to appease European Union mandates rightly restricting the use of French appellations for anything not actually produced in said appellations. A memorial note to Max Schubert has been tucked in the top left corner every year since his passing in 1994. But other than that, the label on Australia’s most famous wine has remained much the same since Menzies was in The Lodge.
And, to be fair, they look like it.
They come from a world where the typesetters have suppressed all the artists, and flourish is banished in favour of facts.
There are Hemingway short stories with smaller word counts than the labels on Grange, and the key question you could ask about the design is not what fonts were used, but if there are any that weren’t.
And they are, in their own original way, wonderful.
It’s because they’re wrapped around the bottle that has done more than any other in taking the story of Australian fine wine to the world. They have attained profundity through proximity, the label perfectly reflecting the wine through their shared idiosyncrasies.
Changing it entirely would be like covering the Sydney Opera House in leopard print. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play with it a bit.
“From the moment we started working with Nigo, we knew at some point during the creative process that bold and brave decisions needed to be made,” explains Penfolds global chief marketing officer, Kristy Keyte.
“Inviting Nigo to reimagine the packaging for our flagship wine was just that – a first for Penfolds, a bold step for Penfolds. At the core level it’s why we enlisted a global creative partner in the first place, to stretch our thinking and push the brand out of its comfort zone.“
And that is what Nigo has done, by placing that landmark label within a deftly designed box that pays tribute to Grange in Nigo’s signature style, featuring a bold and colourful grape graphic and Penfolds logo reimagined through Human Made’s distinctive typography.
Alongside the release of 1500, 750ml bottles, plus 150 magnums of the 2019 Grange packaged this way in a one-off release, Nigo has also designed 25 silk rugs. The rugs, measuring 2.5 square metres and woven in Nepal, feature a purple grape design that mirrors the design cues of the Grange by Nigo packaging.
Nigo, a committed wine lover and noted Grange collector, has found a real affinity with the wine, an understanding of the brief informed not just by an artistic eye, but an intuitive palate as well.
“The amazing thing about wine is that it is something that could be made to taste different every year, but it will always have the consistent taste of that winery,” says the designer, connecting directly to the principle of change around a core of consistency that lies at the heart of this project.
“If there are rules, then one must learn the rules. Breaking those rules then connects to creativity. That is Shuhari, the three stages of mastery: understanding the fundamentals, breaking with tradition and creating one’s own techniques.”
Somewhere Max Schubert is slowly nodding his head in agreement.
The Grange by Nigo bottlings are now available, at $1350 for a 750ml bottle and $3100 for a 1.5L magnum. The Nigo by Grange silk rugs retail for $10,000.
