When Walla Walla’s L’Ecole No. 41 launched a new look and label last spring, it came as something of a shock to fans and industry observers. After all, the winery is one of Washington’s oldest and had been on a steady growth curve since it was founded in 1983. (This year it is expected to produce some 35,000 cases.) Its label, a colorful, “folk art” depiction of the namesake one-room schoolhouse—still a landmark beside a rural highway—was both charming and highly recognizable.

And yet, according to Marty Clubb, managing winemaker/owner, the label, once a groundbreaker, had become a liability. Familiar and beloved to core consumers in Washington state, the playful image encountered a wall of resistance from buyers and sommeliers in major markets around the country. Some felt it resembled the once trendy “critter wines,” an association unbefitting the ultra-premium (average $25 per bottle) price tags of L’Ecole’s wines, many estate-grown.

In 2009, Clubb and his team embarked on the arduous process of rethinking their brand’s strategic positioning. A year later, they hired Anton Kimball Design, a Portland, Ore., marketing consultant, to analyze the brand.

Kimball identified important assets: a 27-year-old, brick-and-mortar winery, family-owned with a third generation now involved; a commitment to innovation and sustainability; a leading ultra-premium winery in the Walla Walla Valley; an established national brand with distribution in more than 20 countries.

L’Ecole No. 41 is, the principals acknowledged, “no longer a regional, mom-and-pop winery.” Although the schoolhouse itself remained the winery’s iconic representation, the manner in which it was represented could evolve, the study pointed out.

“There was a clear disconnect between the wine package, the quality of wine in the bottle and the wine price. We needed a label that would convey the story of the schoolhouse in a more sophisticated, elegant manner and would also reflect the ultra-premium quality of the wine,” according to Clubb.

Reconnecting image and reality
The management team took the fateful decision and hired Kimball to conceive and execute a new design. Kimball was asked to retain the schoolhouse as the label’s centerpiece, redesign the logo with a more sophisticated font and establish three wine tiers: Columbia Valley, Walla Walla Valley and Walla Walla Valley single-vineyard blends.

The creative process was overwhelming at times, Clubb reported, but for the most part invigorating; the package redesign created a ripple effect for all the winery’s marketing materials and merchandise. Anton Kimball himself painted the new, sepia-toned monochromatic schoolhouse image, and his firm collaborated on design of case boxes, capsules, corks, business stationery and website.

L’Ecole continued its longstanding professional relationship with label printer TAPP Technologies, which has an office in Langely, British Columbia, to serve the Pacific Northwest. “It was comforting to work with TAPP,” commented L’Ecole general manager Debbie Frol. “Our designer and printer worked together to assure a flexible design that would accommodate addition of new wines to our portfolio. The printing method is waterless offset on Fasson paper.”  TAPP later submitted the labels to industry label/design competitions.

TricorBraun WinePak, Benicia, Calif., supplies all glass bottles except for the top-tier Walla Walla Valley blends, which are sourced from SaverGlass, Napa. TricorBraun contracted with Synergy Solutions to manufacture case boxes; six-pack boxes for the top-tier blends were printed this year at Portland’s NW Paper Box.

Corks, altered to include the winery’s phone number and website in the new logo and font, come from Cork Supply, Benicia, Calif. A new black capsule with the “schoolhouse” stamp on top and new logo on the side tops the Columbia Valley tier. A specially matched bronze capsule with stamp and logo top the other tiers; Rivercap, Benicia, supplies both.

“Our labels required new emboss and foil dies. We also added a suede finish. We did encounter a few applications hurdles and made adjustments to solve them,” Frol recalled.

The winery reports that the new look has been embraced enthusiastically by consumers, distributors and on-premise outlets, breathing new life into a mature brand.