You may have heard you need “wine branding” to grow a successful wine business and attract consumer attention. But what is wine branding, really? Is it just your logo and label design? Your vineyard’s story? Your distribution strategy? Spoiler alert: It’s all of these things and then some.
If you’re not sure where to start with building a cohesive brand strategy for your wine business, you’ll learn everything you need to know in this guide.
To stand out in the wine market, you need more than a pretty logo slapped on a wine bottle – your audience craves a real emotional connection, memorable visuals, and a consistent brand voice. Here is how to build them.
What Is Wine Branding?
Wine branding is the marketing identity of your wine business. While visual elements like labels and logos form the foundation, an authentic wine branding strategy runs deeper.
Wine branding includes:
- Your winery’s origin story
- The values your winery embodies
- The consistent experience your customers have
- The emotional connection that wine enthusiasts feel with your brand
- Engaging storytelling
- Unique visual identity
- Production methods that set your wines apart
- Anything else that makes your wine business unique
Think about Château Margaux, whose branding evokes centuries of French winemaking tradition through its historic château imagery and consistent presentation of elegance.
In contrast, 19 Crimes is a label that features convicted criminals and connects wine with historical narratives that resonate with younger consumers.
Whether you’re building a luxury wine brand or a quirky label, a strong brand identity is the foundation for everything you do and every decision you make.
So, it’s essential to get it right from the start.
Why Is Wine Branding Important?
According to the State of US Wine Industry Report 2025, the wine industry is in a state of transition.
As Boomer populations decline, wineries must go after younger consumers who currently index lower for wine purchases compared to other alcoholic beverages.
Developing targeted marketing campaigns for the 30-45 age demographic is essential, but these consumers engage with wine differently than previous generations.
They seek authentic stories, sustainable practices, and memorable experiences over traditional notions of prestige and the luxury wine market.
When consumers choose a bottle, they’re buying into a specific experience and the emotions associated with it.
You’re selling wine, but you’re also selling the moment a cork pops at a milestone celebration and the rich conversation that unfolds over a shared bottle of Cabernet. You’re selling a story and an experience.
This is why 82% of people buy from a brand they have a high emotional connection with. Only 38% buy when there’s a low emotional connection. Learn more about building your brand strategy.
So, How to Brand a Wine? 10 Steps to Standing Out in the Wine Industry
1. Tell Your Unique Brand Story
I bet your wine has a story worth telling. It doesn’t matter whether your vineyard spans five centuries or you’re a first-generation winemaker who left corporate America to pursue a passion.
You have an origin story, and that narrative is the foundation of an authentic brand connection. Brands that consistently tell their story see a 20% increase in brand value.
Here are a few ways you can leverage brand storytelling in your own brand and across all marketing channels:
- Document your winery’s founding moment, the one that brought your idea to life
- Speak about the challenges you’ve overcome in creating your wines (and upholding your winery’s values!)
- Highlight unique elements of your terroir that influence your wine’s character
- Talk about your values and why they’re important to you
- Use social media platforms to take your audience behind the scenes
For example, for one of our clients, FED by Alex, we built their brand story on the overarching message that Alex is there to help you keep up and stay full even when your life is busy. Her brand believes in the deep and loving bonds that can form across a table over a meal.
RESULTS THAT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES
Download our case studies + client experiences to review the impact of our website design and brand strategy services have beyond the stunning deliverables you’ll find in our portfolio.
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2. Study Your Target Audience
You need to understand precisely who will be uncorking your bottles. Different wine consumers have dramatically different preferences, knowledge levels, and purchasing motivations.
For example, Gen Z and younger millennials often seek sustainability practices and innovative packaging formats like canned wines. Established wine enthusiasts prioritize vineyard heritage and technical aspects like aging processes. High-income professionals might use wine selection as social signaling, and casual consumers may be intimidated by traditional wine terminology.
Without this targeted understanding, your marketing resources scatter across ineffective channels.
So, make sure to do in-depth market research and analyze market trends to understand how to better position your wine brand (without compromising its authenticity!).
3. Create a Memorable Wine Label Design
In retail environments, your label must capture the attention of your target audience right away.
50% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands they recognize, so it’s essential to improve your brand recognition with a unique label design.
Think creatively! For example, 19 Crimes revolutionized wine labeling by incorporating augmented reality technology. Their labels feature historical criminals who tell their stories when viewed through a smartphone app.
This creates a memorable interactive experience that intrigued many younger consumers who might otherwise choose craft beer or spirits.
4. Design a Consistent Visual Identity
Consistent visual branding = stronger emotional connection and brand loyalty.
When consumers encounter your brand across multiple touchpoints before purchase, such as through your social media presence and on retail displays, cohesive visuals increase the likelihood of them choosing your wine label.
Your wine brand needs the following visual identity assets for strategic marketing:
- Primary and secondary logo variations
- Color palette that distinguishes your brand and reflects your wine’s characteristics
- Typography system and fonts
- Icons and brand patterns
- Photography style guide
Here’s an example of a visual brand identity we created for one of our clients, Joshua Tree Brewing Co.
Joshua Tree Brewing Co. serves an arrangement of local beers on tap, each of them a nod to one of the many unique features within the small town – including alien encounters and the nearby national park. 👽
5. Define Your Brand Voice
Your brand voice is how your winery speaks to customers.
Your wine label can be sophisticated and exclusive if you’re building a luxury brand or approachable and fun if you want to attract more casual wine drinkers. Or, maybe, irreverent and bold to draw attention to your wine label in a competitive market.
Wine has its own specialized vocabulary, and you need to decide if you’ll embrace technical terms or use simpler language.
Some wine drinkers feel intimidated by wine terminology, especially younger generations and more casual drinkers. In contrast, some audience segments specifically seek out technical descriptions that demonstrate winemaking expertise.
Clear and intentional brand messaging helps you connect with YOUR target audience.
6. Consider Regulatory Requirements
In the US, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) requires specific information on labels and restricts certain health claims or misleading statements. These regulations impact your packaging design and marketing claims.
You don’t have to see these rules as pure limitations. There are ways to use them creatively!
You can make the required alcohol content part of your design. Even the warning labels can look good when you place them thoughtfully on your bottle.
When you’re choosing a brand designer, one of the questions you should ask them is whether they’re able to incorporate mandatory health information creatively into your visuals.
7. Create a Brand Experience
I think we can all agree that drinking wine is an experience. Your wine can feel like a sleepover with your closest girlfriends, a romantic dinner, a spontaneous sunset gathering on a beach blanket with new friends over a bottle of sparkling wine…you name it!
Your branding should extend to how people experience your wine beyond just drinking it.
For wine businesses, this might include your tasting room atmosphere, the temperature you recommend serving your wine, food pairing suggestions, or the ritual of opening your bottle.
The unboxing experience matters, too. Consider the weight of your bottle, the sound of your cork, and even the texture of your label as part of your overall brand experience.
8. Build Relationships
With the rise of AI, successful marketing is becoming more and more about personality. 92% of people trust recommendations from people over brands – even if they don’t know them!
If you want to increase brand visibility, you need to leverage social media and other marketing channels to build relationships with your potential customers. To make them feel connected to your brand and its unique identity.
Here are some ideas on how to do that:
- Take them behind the scenes on social media platforms like Instagram
- Share founder-led content (a weekly newsletter can work great for this!)
- Start a wine club
- Respond to customer comments on social media with genuine conversation, not canned responses
- Build relationships with wine bloggers and explore influencer partnerships
In other words, invite customers into your world and make them feel valued, connected, and seen.
9. Create a Brand Style Guide
A brand style guide keeps your wine brand consistent, and it’s especially important when multiple people handle your marketing. Having this document saves you and your team time when creating new labels, updating your website, or designing promotional materials.
When you work with Bethany Works®, we create a detailed style guide that has everything you need for cohesive marketing, including:
- Visual guidelines (logo usage, color palette, typography, photography style)
- Messaging framework (brand voice, key messages, taglines)
- Target audience profiles and customer journey mapping
As brand strategists, we also add custom elements that are unique to your brand. For wine branding, this can look like label design specifications, tasting note templates, wine description vocabulary, and more.
10. Test and Refine Your Brand Identity
The wine industry is ever-evolving, and your branding shouldn’t get stuck in one place, either. Use the feedback from your customers about your labels, messaging, and overall brand impression to make small adjustments to your marketing tactics as you continue to grow your brand.
What Makes a Wine Brand Successful?
Wine branding that resonates isn’t built on guesswork or following trends. It’s backed by consumer psychology and refined skill. You need to go beyond creating wine label designs that just look nice and writing descriptions that sound fancy.
Instead, build your wine brand identity on psychological principles that connect with how your target customers think and make decisions.
Wine consumers face dozens of choices, and they don’t carefully evaluate each bottle. Their brains use shortcuts, such as visual cues, emotional connections, and pattern recognition. Successful wine brands understand these mental processes and design everything to work with these natural tendencies.
This psychology-backed approach means knowing why certain colors trigger specific associations with wine quality and why specific types of imagery connect with particular customer segments.
This is exactly what we do at Bethany Works® when we build your brand to speak straight to your people’s hearts (and wallets!).
Hire Bethany Works® as Your Wine Branding Agency
At Bethany Works®, we create psychology-backed, thoughtful, and true-to-you branding for fierce visionaries and tenacious creatives, including wine brands.
Whether you’re launching a new wine label or refreshing an established brand, we’ll help you stand out and speak to your target audience in a way that actually means something to them. Learn more about our branding and website design services!
