Flowdesign Accents Liquior Bottles With Old- and New-Fashioned Motifs

In two recent but completely separate projects, Flowdesign Inc. in Detroit successfully blended old icons with new forms for two liquor brands. Both custom-designed bottles contain the standard 750 ml of liquor, and both bend category rules by essentially creating new categories.

Arcella Premium Brands LLC introduced the Redcliff Liqueur, the first premium American liqueur, in a flask like bottle with a Southwestern style label and a recurring spiral sun icon. In the second project, Piedmont Distillers designed their premium Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine bottle to resemble the XXX jug that the word "moonshine" usually brings to mind, but updated with a sleek ceramic coating.

The label of Redcliff, "America's Liqueur," has a distinctive Southwestern essence that may resonate across the U.S. The Catdaddy bottle hopes to bring Carolina moonshine into an unheard-of premium realm with a cleanly executed ceramic coating.

America's own liqueur

Frank Arcella, owner of Arcella Premium Brands in Las Vegas, noticed a few years back that there was no truly American liqueur. Arcella thought that a cola-flavored liqueur was a sure bet to capture the imagination of adventurous liqueur drinkers. "With 15 distinctive blended ingredients, Redcliff Liqueur offers a truly unique American taste and has a Southwestern look and feel," says Arcella.

Arcella called upon Flowdesign for their brand identity and package design expertise with beverage bottles. "We were inspired by an old vase supplied to us by Frank Arcella," says Dan Matauch, president of Flowdesign. Arcella had owned the vase for some 15 years, and he envisioned the new bottle with a flat presentation and a cathedral-type window on the front.

Flowdesign developed the unique tombstone-shaped bottle, which tapers out at the bottom to two inches deep and features custom designed 360-degree spirals embossed in the glass. The spiral sun petroglyph actually came in early in the design process, and grew in prominence and importance to hold its now-central role. The symbol is a variation on an American Indian symbol for the sun, and Matauch feels it has added affinities to both European and Chinese traditions.

Flowdesign also worked with prominent American artist Stephen Reaves to finalize the front label acrylic painting image, which helps enhance Redcliff's Southwestern theme. The paper label features hot stamped gold foil on the spiral logo and outside border, along with embossed elements on the painting to give it a realistic "lifted" or "relief" acrylic-painting texture.

More than several rounds of revisions were necessary to get the bottle shape right, and the flask-like bottle was eventually produced by Saxco-Demptos in Louisville. Arcella had a goal to achieve largest label area possible for his cathedral window vision. "The bottle ends up becoming a canvas for the label," says Arcella. St. Lois Litho is responsible for the label and the raised printing effects. "The approach was to develop a bottle that would stand out on the back bar," says Arcella.

Premium Carolina moonshine?

The design elements of the Catdaddy Carolina Moonshine bottle are not necessarily meant to suggest a romantic connection to illegal moonshine of yore. The design elements are meant to communicate that this is real moonshine, albeit "Specially Crafted," "Private Batch," and "Triple-Distilled" moonshine.

The Piedmont Distillers plant in Madison, NC, is the only legal distillery in the state. Piedmont does not readily reveal the ingredients of Catdaddy, but moonshine was traditionally fashioned from corn mash, which is a mixture of corn, malt, and sugar. Catdaddy is a private batch recipe made in an authentic copper pot still in Madison's former train station built in 1915.

The shiny, premium-looking bottle certainly emulates the paradigmatic moonshine jug Americans have come to know from television and other media references. The embossed triple-X emblem and embossed Piedmont moon logo serve to reinforce the elements of the old moonshine jug. To convey the premium nature of the product, however, all the design elements had to be executed in an artistic and precise manner.

"We designed the bottle and label to reflect the rich history of moonshine, while keeping it in the 21st century," says Matauch. "We added touches like triple-X and a custom half moon molded into the glass; a rustic, yet clean font to tell the product story; and an embossed Piedmont Distillers logo to highlight the product's moonshine roots in a premium way."

Matauch also felt it was important to drive quality and authenticity by utilizing applied ceramic label (ACL) graphics to deliver a two-tone look that would hark back to real moonshine jugs of yore. This printing technique is very challenging because—to achieve its hard line look—the ceramic color coating has to be first masked off, sprayed, and baked before the graphics are applied.

To make this bottle a reality, Piedmont Distilleries contacted World Pack in Plano, TX. World Pack's John Althaus recalls an extremely aggressive timeline for such a special project in relatively small quantities. As it happens, the design required a special tool and 30 days of trial and error just to adjust the spray heads to make the opaque area cut line sharp.

"After a lot of trial and error, it turned out great," says Althaus. "Now we've got expertise." The bottles were heated and cooked three different times during the process. Matauch believes the opaque, smooth, and shiny organic cream-colored enamel with the organic ACL printing on top gives the bottle an impressive retro feel. The tall Catdaddy name on the front gives prominence and importance to the brand name, a word that many would not know was once used to distinguish highest quality moonshine.