Writing the Cloudy Bay Book

Cloudy Bay contacted me to help create an evergreen ‘single source of truth’ for New Zealand’s most famous wine brand. The brief: to celebrate and reinvigorate Cloudy Bay’s distinctly New Zealand story with an authentic voice. Rather than an internal-use-only type of document, the concept was to create a coffee table book that any wine fan (or classy bar) would be proud to display.

Mentelle Notes, a sort of insider newsletter in the 1980s and 1990s, was an inspiration for the kind of mischievous and laconic tone we wanted to recapture for the brand. I also reworked and redefined Cloudy Bay’s tasting notes to suit the voice and make them more approachable and less ‘wine-speak’. We included a more systematic framework for describing the wines, both to help retail staff and to help consumers by not obfuscating the truth: it’s a bloody good drink.

The physical book is available to Cloudy Bay VIPs, but you can read the digital version here.