Grava.
What they do.
Alistair Gardner and Karla Falloon started Grava Martinborough in 2014 from vines planted 10 years earlier. While Al grows and makes the wine, Karla acts as General Manager when she’s not working in the day job over the hill in Wellington.
While Martinborough is home for these two, they spend a great deal of time in Spain. Indeed, Al has been making wine in Spain for the last twenty years. It wasn’t until recently that he joined good pal and fellow winemaker Nacho Álvarez to make Godello and Mencía from Nacho’s heritage vineyards located in Bierzo, Northern Spain.
The New Zealand vineyards owned by Al and Karla became certified organic with BioGro New Zealand in 2023 and consider full circle, sustainable farming and winemaking necessary if you’re to make wine you feel happy to sell.
They operate a Tasting Room in Martinborough and for the first time, brought the Spanish wines back to New Zealand so they could share a little of ‘there’ with their wine curious pals ‘here’.
What we do.
Al and Karla had been represented by a NZ based wine distributor for a while but couldn’t find a successful synergy and sales had all but stopped if it weren’t for their Tasting Room and online sales.
They approached Tradecraft to work through a sales strategy and expressed a desire to create a label that they both felt more inspired by so as to be reinvigorated by the work they were doing.
We engaged in a brand workshop initially to clarify brand identity and plan a route that would provide better outcomes for the brand and business. From this work it was agreed a brand refresh would be appropriate and we set about crafting a brief to submit to creative suppliers to assist with the project.
Inhouse were engaged along with photographer Bonny Beattie to execute a visual story for Grava that spoke both of New Zealand and Spain in equal measure but conveyed the modest, intellectual approach that both Al and Karla commit to their winery.
Grava means gravel in Spanish. It would have proven too pedestrian to reference terroir. That wouldn’t set Grava apart from the other wineries in NZ or Spain and so after a 2am eureka moment, it was devised that gravel has a sound - a crunch. It was from here that we travelled down the pathway to exploring all the sensory activations wine enjoyment calls on - from smell and taste to mood and sound. Abstract? Sure. Joyous and fun? You bet.
You can read more on these elements at the Grava Journal
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Strategy and Creative Direction: Morven McAuley
Copy Writing: Morven McAuley
Design and web build: Inhouse.nz and Morven McAuley
Photography: Bonny Beattie, Karla and Al on disposable Kodak Cameras
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