BlogWe are delighted to announce that our Weavers Gin bottle has been shortlisted for the UK Packaging Awards 2021.
If you have ever seen this beautiful blue bottle, this news may not come as a surprise. We might be biased, but we do think it is one of the most beautiful gin bottles out there. It seems the people at the UK Packaging Awards agree.
With the gin market booming, there is an ever-increasing number of gins competing for space and attention on back bars and retailers’ shelves. When it comes to attracting potential customers, the design of the bottle can be just as important as the liquid inside. But when you browse the gin offerings in your favourite cocktail bar or local off sales, have you ever wondered about the story behind the bottle?
The story behind the bottle
Weavers Gin is inspired by the linen industry in Ulster and Ireland as a whole. For more than three centuries, linen was Ireland’s most important industry. Belfast, in particular, was a huge centre for linen production. In fact, it was Belfast’s biggest industry – bigger than ship building or whiskey.
From the botanicals used in distillation, to the bespoke glass design and the label on the bottle, Weavers Gin is a celebration of that proud linen heritage.
Irish linen
Irish linen was famous around the world. It adorned the tables of royalty, graced the dressing rooms of the rich and famous. It even coated the wings of the first airplanes or ‘bi-planes’ and helped some of the first aviators take to the skies, including the Royal Flying Corps in World War One.
Linen production was spread across the whole country, from the cities to the most rural parts of Ireland. While the towns were home to scores of linen mills and factories, the countryside would have been filled with flax fields growing the raw materials for the industry. Bleaching greens were also a common sight, where huge sheets of newly woven linen were laid out in the fields to lighten dry in the summer sun.
Weavers Irish Gin is crafted in honour of the thousands of men and women who laboured in the linen mills and toiled in the flax fields to make Irish linen the envy of the world. Infused with Irish flax seeds for extra smoothness, Weavers Gin is as crisp, cool and clean as the linen it is inspired by.
Bottle colour
This isn’t just another blue gin bottle. The Weavers bottle is flax flower blue. Flax is the raw material for the linen industry. Back in Ireland’s linen heyday, the countryside would have been blue with the colour of the flax flowers blooming in the fields. That pure, gentle blue is captured beautifully in the blue hue of the glass used to make the Weavers Gin bottle.
Bottle design
The first thing you may notice when you pick up a bottle of Weavers Gin (apart from how beautiful it is), is that it is quite heavy. This immediately gives the impression of a premium, quality product. We wanted the bottle to look and feel strong. The size, shape and weight of the bottle reflect the strength and stature of the linen industry, which was once the biggest industry in Ulster – bigger than ship building or whiskey, for which Ulster and Belfast are perhaps most famous.
The bespoke bottle design incorporates a few nods to Ireland’s linen industry. In particular, the vertical lines that decorate the Weavers Gin bottle are reminiscent of the rows of flax plants that would have grown in fields up and down the country. Flax is a ‘row crop’, planted in straight lines, and so we have incorporated this into the bottle design.
The words ‘Excellence Instilled’ can be found at the bottom of the Weavers Gin bottle. It is a trademark of The Echlinville Distillery and reflects our ethos of pursuing excellence at every stage of the production process, from field to glass.
The label
The colours in the label are primarily blue, to reflect the flax flowers and linen production’s agricultural roots, and silver to reflect the industrial element of linen production and the technology used in the mills and factories around Ireland. Indeed, at the top of the label we have placed a blue flax flower within the silver cogs of industry.
The Weavers Gin label is beautifully intricate to reflect the craftsmanship and craftswomanship involved in fine linen production. The decorative swirls on the outer four corners of the label is a reproduction of the damask design on the linen tablecloths on the Titanic.
So that is the story of Weavers Gin. The stunning liquid and beautiful bottle – both as crisp, cool and clean as the linen they are inspired by.
Our thanks to our colleagues at Stoelzle Glass Group, Mark Thompson Design and Reflex Labels for helping us create this stunning bottle.
