Guitar Neck-Embossed Vodka Bottle Signals Music City Roots

Pickers Vodka

 

Pennington Distilling Co. enlisted the services of Berlin Packaging’s Studio One Eleven design agency to redesign its Pickers Vodka bottle—a stock bottle with a plastic closure—to reflect the premium quality of its handcrafted vodka, reports an article in Packaging World magazine. The caveat was that the new structure had to be able to run on the distiller’s existing filling line with minimal disruption.

According to Scott Jost, Berlin Packaging’s vice president of innovation & design, as with all new structural packaging design projects, Berlin Packaging began by auditing Pennington’s filling, capping, and labeling capabilities to understand the interplay between the processing equipment and the soon-to-be-outgoing packaging. “Concepts that require no line modifications or adjustments are considered ‘operationally invisible’ solutions,” he explains. “For the Pickers project, we targeted minimal operational impact by maintaining filling-head height and bore, overall diameter, label area, and the closure within the range of existing equipment adjustability.”

Other than height, diameter, and label area though, the new bottle strikes an entirely different chord, embossed with details that clearly connect the brand with its music city roots. The clear glass bottle, designed by Studio One Eleven and supplied by Berlin Packaging's Bruni Glass division, prominently features an embossed guitar pick bearing the iconic three stars of Tennessee’s state flag near its neck. To reinforce musical connections and influence, the two sides of the bottle are embossed with the neck of a guitar, giving Pickers a matchless look from every angle.

Pennington launched the new bottle in August 2018 in a 750-mL and a 1-L size. Raving about the bottle’s ease of handling are consumers—and bartenders especially—who attribute the bottle’s better grip to its slender width and guitar-fret embossing. Retailers have responded enthusiastically as well, as the clean design and ROPP finish have resulted in an improved shelf presence for Pickers. Since the new bottle was introduced, the Pickers Vodka brand has expanded to 17 states nationwide.

Explore more innovative package designs in the Spirits, Wine and Beer category from Studio One Eleven.

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