Taken Wine

Features

  • Custom are for wine-specific notes and technical data
  • Crafted brand tagline

Overview

Towards the end of last summer, I was fortunate enough to work on website that had no previous online home unto itself. While that is certainly not a deal-breaker in the least, there is something about starting a website from scratch, with no other iterations that came before, that is refreshing. Such was the case for Taken Wine, when they approached me about a website for the wine label.

Armed with a style guide (super handy to have!) and a web brief (equally as handy), I was excited about the challenge of giving this brand an online home of its own. The wine’s philosophy was simple: to craft great wines to share with friends, with their emblem representing the path from vineyard to glass. Equally important, was the heritage— the wine was created by second and third generation winemakers who have winemaking and Napa Valley terroir in their genes. They requested a site that was modern but approachable, with a little edge to it that would convey the “contemporary meets tradition” sentiment of the wine.

From a technical perspective, this was one of the first websites where I really dove into some industry-specific coding. I coded specially-designed input boxes on the back end where the client could easily add in wine technical data, such as alcohol, pH, etc. No longer did they have to format all of those details within one large content area and style it themselves. I took care of all of it on the backend, making it 10x easier to update vintages going forward. (Spoiler alert: code that simplifies life for the client, while maintaining a strong design on the front end is totally motivating for me. I love that type of coding.)