Our New Seven Apart Expedition™ Label Revealed

Seven Apart is proud to reveal our new Seven Apart Expedition™ label, designed by the team at Offset Partners and here to take our wine to the next level.

If change is the only constant, then for the Seven Apart team, change is also an opportunity to improve constantly. In August 2019, Seven Apart acquired a neighboring property called Orange Grove with the view to extending the Base Camp vineyard. Here, the team set about planting young white wine vines. In anticipation of the first vintage from this vineyard, Seven Apart approached the team at Offset Partners for a new label design. 

Since Seven Apart’s inception, the team at Offset has been responsible for bringing each wine label to life. After evaluating the current range, it was a natural choice to use a white background label for the white wine. To avoid confusion, we decided to redesign the label for our flagship Seven Apart Expedition™ Cabernet Sauvignon which had been white in previous vintages. As specialists in brand design, Offset’s Lindsay Regan, VP of Brand Strategy, shares the thought process behind the new label for our Seven Apart Expedition™ Cabernet Sauvignon:

What is the motivation for updating the Seven Apart Expedition label? 

LR: It all began with the request to add a white wine to the portfolio and how a label for this new wine could potentially look. After conversations with the Seven Apart team and considering the collection as a whole, we quickly realized that there was an opportunity to also reevaluate the Seven Apart Expedition™ as the flagship wine from Seven Apart. With this in mind, we agreed that this was the perfect time to create a new iteration of the Seven Apart Expedition™ label to best reflect the wine’s gravitas within the portfolio.

How did you go about conceptualizing the new label?
LR: We already had a strong Seven Apart brand system in place that we could lean into, so we returned to these elements to ensure uniformity and balance among the entire collection. The logo for Seven Apart is bold, modern, and iconic – marrying a “7” and an “A” into a mountain peak as a reference to the prized vineyard perched seven miles from their winery home on the valley floor. Seven Apart Shale™, Seven Apart Basalt™, and Seven Apart Summit™ each have their own unique background textures centered around the soil type. We wanted to maintain the portfolio hierarchy all the while elevating the Seven Apart Expedition™ label. The new Seven Apart Expedition™ (and upcoming white wine) label both feature a topographic map texture.

Can you explain the new label’s look and feel? 

LR: The latest iteration took on a new color scheme to cement its status in the range – from a black logo on a white background to a gold logo on a black background. The label features the same Kurz gold foil used across the brand, and multiple hits of black with varnish treatments for different elements on the paper. 

How does your creative process work? 

LR: For this project, the key contributors were Emilio Domingo, our Senior Brand Designer, Courtney Paddock, our Production Designer and Coordinator, and myself. Of course, we worked very closely with the Seven Apart team. Don, the founder, always has a vision of what he wants and strives for impeccable execution. When we first discussed the new Seven Apart Expedition™ label, we spoke about what would and wouldn’t work and the value of leveraging the existing brand system. After that, we looked at different kinds of color cues and combinations to ensure the label would fit into the brand hierarchy. Don and Seven Apart’s amazing General Manager, Yannick, know the value of what has already been established and wanted to lean into this.

Are you happy with the final result? 

LR: Absolutely! This project was about finessing​​. I think the new Seven Apart Expedition™ label fits in effortlessly with the Seven Apart collection, and we’re confident that the outside of the bottle is as good as what’s inside it! 

What makes the 2020 Seven Apart Expedition extra special?
LR: The ‘Glass Fire’ of 2020 wreaked havoc across Northern California. While luckily Seven Apart’s vineyards were spared, smoke taint damaged the majority of grapes in the precious Stags Ridge vineyard.  For this reason, the Seven Apart team decided not to release any 2020 Vintage wines from the Stags Ridge Vineyard this year. This includes the Seven Apart Shale™, Seven Apart Basalt™, and Seven Apart Summit™ Cabernet Sauvignon. Traditionally, Seven Apart Expedition™ is a Cabernet Sauvignon blended from grapes harvested from both the Base Camp and Stags Ridge vineyards, but the 2020 vintage used only Base Camp fruit, halving the quantity produced to 825 cases of the Seven Apart Expedition™ vintage. A true phoenix from the ashes, the limited-release 2020 Seven Apart Expedition™ will undoubtedly be a vintage that will go down in Seven Apart’s history books. 

The latest 2020 Seven Apart Expedition™ vintage will be released this September to members of our allocation list.