Aquilini Wines
Design, build, test and launch seven websites to introduce seven totally new wine brands PLUS an e-commerce wine shop in seven months? No problem!
Situation:
When the highly regarded Vancouver BC-based Aquilini family decided to go big in Washington State wine, they hired Gallo veteran Robert Chin as CEO. Purchasing over 600 acres in the prestigious Red Mountain AVA, plus acreage in Horse Heaven Hills and the broader Columbia Valley, the Aquilini’s are nothing if not ambitious. The challenge was to match their ambition by producing individually branded sites that accurately portrayed each unique brand personality. Additionally, this had to be carried out in a manner that took advantage of a shared structural foundation, but one that needed enough flexibility to customize and create major distinctions between each brand. All of this had to be done within a relatively tight budget, with overlapping design and development schedules that were designed to keep or outpace the launch schedules.
The Aquilini organization needed to work quickly and tirelessly to secure national distribution for each brand — not an easy task, as those familiar with retail can attest. Appearing real and established was a requirement to help achieve this goal, and drove the condensed launch schedule.
Solution:
One Degree joined the team in early 2020, tasked with creating compelling websites for each of the seven new wine brands, including integration of user generated content platform, Pixlee, bottle and lifestyle photography, and brand videos all within a fairly tight comprehensive budget. To accomplish this, we recommended a shared underlying design and UX structure, but one with enough elasticity to allow for the broad range of brand expression necessary to properly and accurately articulate each label it ways that not only spoke to each one’s prospective buyers, but that also captured their individual emotional essence. Within just a few months we’d launched sites for both the high-end Aquilini brand and Dixie & Bass — distinctly different, but both award winning and highly rated by well known wine enthusiast publications and experts, and we had built and launched a consumer-friendly e-commerce wine shop based on the innovative Commerce7 platform.
Hot days shooting stills and aerial footage of the vineyards and field workers, and video interviews of the vineyard managers and winemakers in Benton City were followed by long nights writing, editing and coding in Seattle. Almost to the day, seven months later, each of the unique brands — among them playful Roaming Dog, of-the-zeitgeist Be Human, and the elegant 10,000 Hours — are all live; each part of the overall Aquilini Wine brand tapestry that celebrates the lauded Red Mountain wine growing region of Washington State. Visit all the brand sites to experience the rich variety of personalities, and the wine shop to order online and taste these incredible wines for yourself.