LangeTwins Winery is not your typical vintner. Yes, the Lodi, CA-based business is a multi-generational, family-run operation. Yes, the company has a three-year-old, state-of-the-art winery making its own estate wines as well as bulk and private-label wine brands. Where it differs is primarily in the bottling.

The 11-in. Gallus EM280 UV-flexo press lays down one of the special-match inks for the LangeTwins Chardonnay face label.

“We dominantly use mobile bottling,” says Marissa Lange, who works alongside her cousin Kendra Lange in the winery's marketing department. “We have taken our wines to a facility for bottling only once.”

Through the services of A-T Mobile Bottling Line (www.ATMBL.net) in Napa, CA, LangeTwins has been able to keep a bigger share of its investment dollars in the family, concentrating more on winemaking than wine packaging. Launched in March, A-T's 48-ft bright yellow, semi-tractor-trailer houses equipment from Italy, Australia and the US. The mobile line handles everything from filling and capping to labeling and casepacking.

Along with knowing how to make shrewd investments for bottling, LangeTwins also knows the long-term value of good investments in branding. As the second part of a labeling update that the winery began a year ago, the pair of cousins worked with Nagy Design (www.nagy-design.com) (San Ramon, CA) to create new paper labels. Previously, LangeTwins had collaborated with a UK firm on the label designs, but the cousins felt the need for an experienced designer who could bring a fresh perspective to wine labels. Claudia Nagy, who has 24 years of graphic design experience, was already working with the winery on point-of-sale materials, but she still had the objectivity of an outsider's view when it came to labels.

LangeTwins’ new label design is electronically prepped for platemaking at WS Packaging Group’s San Luis Obispo, CA, facility.

“Both designers aren't new per se, but our label designs represent their first wine label designs,” says Marissa Lange. “We're really excited to be working with fresh ideas.”

The San Luis Obispo, CA, facility of converter WS Packaging Group (www.wspackaging.com) printed the labels using an 11-in. Gallus (www.gallus.org) EM 280 press to lay down four special-match ink colors and one special-match metallic ink color on 60-lb uncoated, bright-white, pressure-sensitive wine-label stock. WS Packaging Group's Wine and Prestige Label operation offers up to 14-color printing in-line; high-resolution, four-color process printing; Hexachrome process printing; custom diecutting; embossing; bronzing; foil-stamping; and no-label-look film labels, among other services.

A foil die cylinder on the Gallus EM280 press stamps a gold-foil accent onto the LangeTwins Chardonnay face label.

“We did a lot of testing and output to get this combination of something relatively vibrant without screaming and making the wine look like it belonged to a lower price point,” says Nagy. LangeTwins' chardonnay, cabernet and merlot wines range from $12.99 to $14.99 per bottle, while the sauvignon blanc retails between $10.99 and $12.99 per bottle.

“We could not find the right color [in the standard color collections],” says Nagy, “so we did end up with custom mixes for just about every color. In fact, the gold color is a special mix for metallic. It's not a straight metallic gold. It's been created to be a lighter shade of the gold to work with the line of red wines and the line of white wines.”

A prepress technician examines a DuPont Cyrel® photopolymer flexo plate for imaging quality.

To achieve further differentiation on the shelf, Nagy also designed the labels with a nontraditional shape. “The next thing that makes us unique is the shape of our front label,” remarks Marissa Lange. “They're not square, and they're not round. They are something in between.” The labels are die-cut to create an arched top and bottom that are rimmed with gold, while the sides are cut straight to help accent the gradient used for the background color.

The family's agricultural history is visually represented by illustrations of natural plant products incorporated subtly into the labels' backgrounds. “The second part of their message is that they have been stewards of the land and have been using sustainable winegrowing practices for years, well before they opened their winery,” Nagy explains. “They have a long history in the business in general, and they've had at least 20 years of already doing something that's now very trendy. This is something they've never promoted before.”

A key feature of the back labels for LangeTwins is a peel-off section, which allows consumers to easily save the product brand and varietal names for future wine purchases. Here, the perforation die demonstrates the functionality of the micro-perforated section.

The cousins decided to retain one design element from the earlier labels—the pull-tab. “Historically, people have always tried to peel wine labels off, which with the new high-tensile-strength glues can be difficult,” Marissa explains. “The pull-tab enables a consumer to order a bottle of our wine at a restaurant or a bar, peel off the micro-perforated tab, stick it in his or her wallet or purse to take to a retailer later.”

The newly labeled bottles are now joining LangeTwins' decorated bottle for its Midnight Reserve wine. The blend, which represents the high end of the LangeTwins brand, retails for approximately $35 a bottle. Unlike its less expensive counterparts, Midnight Reserve's bottle has no paper labels. Instead, the starry sky design is created using a direct, screen-printing process.