Felix Nash’s start-up the Fine Cider Company distributes award-winning, small-batch cider and perry. As a cider merchant, his aim is to bring these traditional drinks to restaurants that might otherwise offer no more than a winelist.

Kellenberger–White’s working relationship with Felix began in 2014, when we created a new typographic identity for Tom Oliver’s Gold Rush and Yarlington Mill labels. The packaging was developed for large and small bottles, with each size sold in a clear-glass, champagne-style bottle with brass crown-cap. We used Albertus and Barbodt, fonts chosen for their bucolic feel and directness, which underlined the “minimal intervention” ethos of Tom’s cidermaking. Accompanying the bottles are small swing-tags, shaped like playing cards. These explain the cidermaking process and carry a palette graph that indicates where the contents of the bottle sit: Full-bodied, Delicate, Sweet, Dry.

Fine Cider starts with an apple, so we chose that as the obvious symbol to underpin our visual identity for the company. We gave the symbol new life by printing it as a lino-cut, producing something that was very authentic and bold. We made this the basis for a logotype system with animations; for guidelines on printed and online marketing material; for the Fine Cider website, and for the packaging of a further new range of cider.

In 2015, Kellenberger–White moved on to creating a visual identity for Tom’s bottle-fermented Fine Perry. Continuing our design methodology, we developed a new hand-drawn packaging style, with the label design screen-printed directly on to the bottle. The style of the labels borrowed, with a nod to Napoleon’s description of perry as “the English champagne”, the atmosphere of classic 19th-century champagne adverts by the likes of Pierre Bonnard, giving them vitality and a decadent feel.