Austrian agency upart honoured for outstanding design.
To celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2023, the Portuguese winemakers' group created two exceptional wines: a red and a Tawny Port. These special cuvées, each blended from the best barrels of the five wineries, deserved a special presentation. The Austrian creative agency upart won the tender. Their design for the labels and packaging of the valuable wines has now been honoured with the Austrian State Prize for ‘Smart Packaging 2024’.
Designing a label for a single winery is challenging because it's not just about aesthetics, but above all about branding and establishing a unique position in a large and competitive market. But it is even more challenging to design a label and packaging for a product from five wineries when each of the winemakers has their own strong personality and brand.
For the ‘20 Year Douro Boys Editions’, the Linz-based design agency upart mastered this challenge brilliantly. Their success was firstly shown by the commercial result: 1,350 magnums of the red cuvée and 650 bottles of the exclusive Tawny were sold all over the world within just 90 minutes during the first presentation of the wines in April 2023. The second major coup came in October 2024 when the design of the special wines was honoured with a prize from the Austrian government!
The award-winning design is characterised by a unique label that encircles the bottle. Five strips, one for each of the Douro Boys wineries, characterise the appearance of the front. The spaces between the strips symbolise the Douro River and underline the deep connection between the winemakers and their region.
“The biggest challenge was to unite five winemaker personalities on one label without neglecting the individuality of each of them,” explains Daniel Frixeder, Managing Director of upart. “The result is a design that not only stands out visually, but also tells the story and the joint work of the Douro Boys for their region.”
Paper labels (Marzek Druck, Austria) were applied to a total of 1,350 magnum bottles of the Anniversary Cuvée 2021 red wine. This wine is currently priced – if available – at between €650 and €800 per magnum.
For the exceptional Anniversary Very Old Tawny Port (950 bottles), the label was screen-printed directly onto the bottles. The price of this rarity, which was composed of barrel-aged Tawnies dating back to the 19th century, is between €700 and €800 per bottle (750 ml).
The wooden crates created for the red cuvée and the Tawny are also exceptional and beautifully reflect the meandering course of the Douro.
The ‘Smart Packaging’ State Prize is awarded every two years by Austria’s Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy (BMAW) in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology. It honours the most innovative and sustainable packaging solutions in Austria. This is the oldest state prize awarded by the BMAW; this year it was awarded for the 61st time.
The Douro Boys collaboration between Quinta do Vallado, Quinta do Crasto, Niepoort, Quinta Vale D. Maria and Quinta Vale Meão wineries began in 2003. The next generation has recently taken over the helm of the association.
Do great minds think alike? Absolutely – especially when passionate and talented winegrowers are involved. Since 2003, four wine producers from the Douro Valley have been working together on one common goal: supplementing their famous Port wines with top-quality reds and whites, to show the world the incredible potential of this special valley.
Douro Boys
Douro Valley
Portugal
