Supernatural wine – dreamt up by Palms Pizzeria founders Stu and Josh – has been delivered to life by Margate studio Outsiders, with a model that is filled with folklore, mischief, and fable. It takes the world of pure wine (normally drenched in minimalism and soil references) and flips it the wrong way up, culminating in a small-batch label that is enjoyable, eerie, and fantastically crafted, with bottles that glow after darkish.
“The founders got here to us with the thought for a pure wine known as Supernatural,” says Outsiders co-founder Tom Lovell. “From the beginning, they needed one thing that stood out and had a way of irreverence.
“All of us agreed there was already some incredible design on this class, so how do you stand out? We needed individuals to be instantly drawn to it after they noticed it on the shelf and to go away them with a smile.”
From its witty tagline (“a pure wine model not of this earth”) to the ghostly wax-sealed tops that double as glow-in-the-dark curiosities, the need to be completely different is seen via each touchpoint. It is a model constructed on contradiction, because it’s each handmade and otherworldly.
“For us, that tagline captured the central stress within the model concept,” says Tom Rogers, the studio’s different co-founder. “Pure wine is commonly described via its connection to the soil, solar, and historical course of. What is the actual reverse of that? The road summed it up completely.”
Outsiders’ strategy to Supernatural was grounded within the query of the way you make somebody choose up your bottle out of the lots of on a dimly lit shelf. Their reply was to suppose past the label.
“We shortly realised that the neck and prime of the bottle are, for probably the most half, utterly left alone,” says Lovell. “Everybody focuses on the bottom label, however why aren’t individuals taking part in with the opposite 50% of the bottle? We had been excited to see if that space might turn out to be an owned asset.”
That discovery led to Supernatural’s signature function – its wax seals. When cooled, the wax kinds eerie, natural shapes, every one barely completely different, like a ghost trapped in movement. “There is a unusual, ghostly vitality to it,” Rogers says. “That high quality felt like the right bridge between the handcrafted and the supernatural.”
In fact, no supernatural story is full with out a glow-in-the-dark second. “We’re all from the Goosebumps technology,” says Lovell. “Nothing says supernatural fairly like one thing glowing in the dead of night.
“We liked the thought of those bottles dwelling in kitchens and, when the lights are switched off, a tiny ghost floating on the shelf.”
Every bottle within the assortment has its personal character, from the gothic crimson to the ghostly white and the Frankenstein-green Pet Nat. “We needed every to embody its personal style,” says Rogers. “A crimson naturally felt gothic, a white turned ghostly, and the inexperienced labored completely for Frankenstein.
“Whenever you wax-seal a bottle cap, it even offers Frankenstein his hairline, which felt too good to not lean into.”
The duo’s background in vogue and product design additionally formed their strategy, as evidenced by Supernatural’s design as an object of need. “We had been aiming for a way of collectability, one thing you’d need two of: one to drink and one to maintain,” says Lovell. “Ideally, you’d need the entire set.”
For all of the humour and character, there is not any scarcity of craft. The studio labored with StickerWizard to create shiny aid labels, giving every bottle a tactile, high-end end. “At no level did we would like the wit to come back at the price of speaking that it is a stupendous, low-batch pure wine,” says Rogers. “We labored laborious on the craft and execution in order that, though it is playful, it nonetheless feels conscious and design-led.”
Technically, the mission was as demanding because it was creative. The crew spent weeks determining the best way to get character faces onto the wax. “For a very long time we thought it wasn’t going to work,” says Lovell. “Then Tom had a second of inspiration and examined considered one of his child’s momentary tattoos on a bottle of whisky he had at dwelling. It labored completely.”
Even the wax itself is an innovation. “I believe we will declare that as an Outsiders’ invention,” Rogers says. “Mixing pigments with wax very particularly to make it glow accurately while nonetheless studying as white within the mild.”
Supernatural’s first three releases – Ghost (white), Vampire (crimson), and Frankenstein (inexperienced Pet Nat) – have already constructed a cult following, however the model’s world remains to be increasing. “The idea grows stronger with every launch,” says Lovell. “There’s an alien-inspired skin-contact wine coming quickly, and from there we’ll hold branching into the paranormal, fantasy, and magical.”
The studio and founders at the moment are exploring new extensions, from glow-in-the-dark candles that match into the bottles to ghostly reward wraps. “There are such a lot of methods to maintain constructing Supernatural as a model and a product universe, not only a wine,” says Rogers.
At its core, Supernatural speaks to a brand new form of wine drinker – one as all for design and storytelling as they’re in tannins and terroir. “They worth high quality, authenticity, and originality,” says Lovell. “For them, the expertise issues simply as a lot because the style.”
If one factor is definite, it is that the expertise of Supernatural wines feels really out of this world.
