Ghost In The Machine
Glencairn
Secret Safari
Off The Charts
The Drift Estate
We are proud to announce that our Ghost in the Machine wine range earned the titles of Best Product Range / Best New Product – Wine & Supreme Champion Awards at this year’s (2024) Harpers Wine and Spirit Magazine Design Awards. This recognition celebrates the collaborative ingenuity behind the range.
SOME CONTEXT for those with an enquiring mind:
Below are the three main drivers within the Bruce Jack Wines business that led to the Ghost in the Machine label:
We have always been fascinated by how our consumers tick. Over the years, the research we’ve done, our personal interactions and the trends we have witnessed have influenced our winemaking and packaging decisions… but probably not in the manner you’d expect.
It doesn’t make business sense, but we can’t help having an affinity for certain types, or segments, of consumers around the world. We know we should be more broad-minded, but we end up wanting to sell to people with whom we share similar values, while steering away from other customers. Financial foolish, I know.
With some embarrassment, I’ve developed certain biases that may be unfair to some, and are undoubtedly counterproductive in business. For example, I find myself increasingly disinterested in consumers who purchase expensive wine solely for the status they imagine it confers. In my youth, I’d try to convert them. Now I just avoid them.
The Ghost in the Machine range is designed and priced in such a way that mostly wine-interested (even wine nerds like me) people are likely to come across the wines and love them. Primarily because they have a brain and are inquisitive and interested in the exciting nuances and discoveries of the wine world. The packaging reflects the quirky, but very deliberate and careful winemaking. The whites are densely-flavoured, skin-fermented ‘orange’ wines without being discoloured by sloppy oxidation, and the reds are whole-bunch fermented, showing layers of crunchy fresh fruit, spices and herbs.
We are a winemaker-driven business, which is a blessing and a curse. The curse part is that winemakers generally make poor CEOs and CFOs. They sometimes first want to make a wine they personally like, and only then try to sell it, or often chase perfection at any expense. There’s a bit of that in us I am afraid.
Similarly, a purely financially-obsessed, accounts-driven wine business doesn’t work either – this is one reason publicly-listed wine businesses struggle. The wine industry has proven stubbornly unsuited to a quarterly reporting environment, where generational cycles can’t hope to meet the normal investor’s rapaciousness.
Rather there must be a balance between winemaking idealism and spreadsheet nihilism. We are still trying to strike this balance.
The blessing part is that as a winemaker-driven business, we value production integrity over short term profitability. And we experience the world of wine as much through our consumers’ eyes as we do through the machinations of a production process. For example, I am obsessed with bottling lines and labelling machines. I can watch them, enraptured in a Zen-like trance, for days. I love the dances they do.
How we use our tools and machines has an impact on our wine – everything from a pair of secateurs to a press must be used consciously and empathetically to make real wine. Without this insight we would never have thought of using our prosaic little labelling line to create a label no one had ever thought of before.
We are natural outsiders. We are more comfortable in an underdog role. We question everything, sometimes to our own detriment. We are happy to choose a principle over profit if the two are in conflict.
We also find it wonderfully eccentric that almost the entire wine industry tries to compete with each other in only two (very similar) shaped bottles and in an arbitrary 750ml volume.
Walking into a large wine shop is like walking into a Virgin Music Megastore in the late ‘80s. The music was categorized much like wine is today, and everything was in the same shaped and sized packaging, just like wine. Except there was even more space, then, to tell your story on a CD cover, than on a typical wine label today. No wonder the consumer often feels lost at sea.
Although we put so much effort and love into our winemaking, its often impossible to communicate that intensity in the limited packaging space we have.
We are intrigued by how we can stand out from the crowd, while also preserving the good things that make wine interesting (like the eccentricity of the bottle shape/size). An innovative, engaging label, while maintaining a premium feel is the holy chalice of wine label design.
One way to engage intelligent, inquisitive wine consumers is to label each bottle differently, so no two bottles share the same look, while simultaneously retaining a ‘family vibe’ of design. The result was the Ghost in the Machine presentation, which utilizes 3 separate wrap-around labels, placed randomly on the bottle. And we did it without relying on clever new technology, but on our beloved, utilitarian labelling machine.
BEHIND THE NAME:
While the wines push the boundaries of winemaking, relying on ancient winemaking practices, the philosophical concept behind the name refers to the sanctuary and power of human imagination, especially in this time of an artificial intelligence onslaught – something we believe is more nefarious than we generally assume.
At this point we are very happy that AI models can’t easily recognize our Ghost in the Machine labels, and we have plans to make that more difficult as they start to learn.
The Harpers Design Award
The Harpers Design Awards honour exceptional creativity and innovation in drinks packaging and design, showcasing how outstanding design can captivate consumers and contribute to product success. Organized by Harpers Wine & Spirit Trade News, these awards spotlight remarkable achievements across the wine, spirits, beer, and cider sectors, recognising excellence in categories such as new launches, redesigns, and established product ranges.
Credit goes to the exceptional talent of designer and friend Rohan Etsebeth of Archival in Cape Town, whose unique approach brought the packaging to life, and our own Packaging Manager, Isabel van den Berg, who turns Bruce Jack’s often crazy and impractical ideas into reality.
The Ghost in the Machine range is currently available exclusively to the on-trade in the UK via Majestic Commercial and from Bruce Jack Wines everywhere else.