HUNTER Luxury has teamed up with Brown Forman and Glenglassaugh Distillery to create a wooden pack for the launch of a highly limited line of whisky – The Serpentine Coastal Cask Collection.
The hand-crafted cases that house the ‘delicately dappled’ bottles were designed to express the story of these spirits, and the distillery that brought them to life.
Taking its name from the serpentine stones found in the cliffs that surround the Glenglassaugh Distillery on Scotland’s north eastern coast, The Serpentine Coastal Cask Collection consists of three whiskies of 48, 49, and 51-years-old, each taken from a rare collection of casks thought to have been lost.
Paul Hamilton, head of wine & spirits at Hunter Luxury, visited the distillery to take in its surroundings, nestled high on the Aberdeenshire coastline.
“The beauty of whisky is that all of this history washes over you after a single sip, as each flavour note explodes on your tongue like a crashing North Sea wave,” he said. “It transports you to the white sands of the coast that you can see from the distillery. Our aim was to evoke that same feeling from the packaging itself.
“Initially, we learned more about the serpentine stone from contacts in Portsoy, a neighbouring village, to understand what options were available for the raw material for the pack. We believe this demonstrates our approach to delivering for our customers – when we undertake a project, we go all out to make it special.”
The final design was a box made with hand-carved oak, crafted to display a wave shape. The design represents the North Sea waves and the patterns of the driftwood that often washes up on the beach, a stone’s throw from the distillery. The wood has been hand-painted to draw out the deep grain of the oak, complementing the naturalistic curves of the wave design, while each black box features a unique plaque detailing its cask number and the customer it was bottled for.
“We worked hard to understand the brief and encapsulate the feeling of the coastal Glenglassaugh brand,” Hamilton added. “The packaging evokes feelings of the tides of change experienced over the decades of maturation with the bespoke, wave-like design.”
Carving a wave effect into the hardwood provided a number of technical challenges, resulting in several discarded prototype designs. After mastering the carving process in-house, creating a gentle wave effect that appears to flow around the corners of the box, Hunter Luxury revealed it landed on a process that could be transferred to its manufacturing partners to scale up the design. While the boxes are all hand-carved, the design was engineered using digital manufacturing technology.
Every element of the final design was bespoke, and tailor-made for this project. The doors of the case were sealed with a heavyweight medallion made from a cast zinc alloy, decorated with a blue enamel and gold design that was colour-matched to every other decorative element within the case.
The exterior of the black case is decorated with gold lettering showing the age of the whisky inside, and a metal plaque showing the cask it was expressed from. Hunter Luxurt added that creating ‘crisp, precise’ graphics on organic materials poses several challenges, as the paints can bleed into the grain. This was resolved by filling laser-engraved patterns with resin prior to painting.
Upon opening the doors of the case – each one held together with electroplated brass hinges – the bottle is picked out by a central glorifier constructed using 27 individual pieces of white oak, CNC carved and fused together.
Inside the plinth, Hunter Luxury engineered a press-to-release drawer mechanism that slides open to reveal a presentation booklet.
“The booklet was an exciting project-within-a-project,” added Hamilton. “We were committed to going the extra mile to make this project truly special, so we developed a 20-page presentation booklet, bound with cloth, on premium European stock. Each book was individually customised to describe the character of each cask.”
To mount, Hunter Luxury used a bespoke woven fibre material lined with a microfibre faux suede. This material was also used to fashion a soft-touch carrying handle, affixed to the case with brass brackets.
“Every packaging project is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us,” Hamilton concluded. “Every brand is unique, and no two packaging projects are the same. We’re proud to keep raising the bar for our customers – their success is its own reward.”
