Most businesses send a branded bottle once a year, in December, along with everyone else. It lands in a week when your client is already receiving four other gifts, and it does about as much work as a Christmas card. Wine branding for ongoing engagement means something different. It means a small, planned run of custom labelled bottles spread across the year and aimed at the relationships that matter. Usually, less money than the December approach, and far more staying power.
The problem with saving it all for December
Every supplier your client deals with sends something in December. Your bottle is competing with hampers, chocolate boxes and a drawer full of branded drinkware, and the recipient is out of the office half that month anyway.
December is also the worst possible time for lead times. Print runs are booked out, freight slows down, and if you place the order in late November, you’re gambling with a fixed date.
The bigger issue is that the timing has nothing to do with the relationship. A bottle that turns up the week a two-year project wraps up means something. A bottle that turns up because the calendar said December means very little.
If you only do one send a year, move it. Something that arrives in March gets remembered precisely because nothing else does.
Making wine branding work for ongoing engagement
A workable rhythm is two planned sends a year plus a standing allowance for the unplanned ones.
- One send tied to your business rhythm, whatever that is: end of financial year for professional services, pre-season for trades, the month after your conference for anyone who runs events
- One send tied to the client’s rhythm rather than yours, so their milestone, their anniversary with you, or their win
- A case or two sitting on the shelf, already labelled, for the things you can’t diarise
That third one is the sleeper. A referral turns into real work, a contract gets renewed, someone goes well out of their way for you. Having twelve labelled bottles already in the cupboard means you can respond that afternoon instead of placing an order that arrives a fortnight after the moment has passed. Wine keeps, so holding stock costs you nothing but the shelf space.
There’s more on the thinking behind this in our piece on how branded bottles work as a client engagement tool.
Tier the list before you choose the wine
Most people pick a wine first and then work out who gets it. That’s backwards, and it’s why so many gifting budgets end up flat, with the client who has been with you eight years receiving the same thing as the one who bought once in 2023.
Write the list first. Split it into three groups. Set a per head number for each.
| Group | Who’s in it | Example | Per head |
| Top relationships | The ten or so accounts you can’t afford to lose | Saddler’s Creek Langhorne Creek Shiraz in a single timber box | $70 |
| Active clients | The next twenty to forty | Watermark Shiraz in a single gloss box | $20 |
| Wider list and events | Everyone else, plus table gifts at functions | 200mL sparkling, or branded 600mL water at daytime events | $10 or $1.50 |
Ten people at $70 and thirty at $20 comes to $1,300 plus freight, and it covers forty relationships properly rather than covering everyone thinly. Bottle prices include artwork, labelling and GST, so the number you see is close to the number you pay once freight is added.
The full range runs from the Watermark varietals at $16 through to Hunter Valley reds in the $45 to $65 bracket, with organics, sparkling, spirits and water alongside. It’s all on the corporate labelled products page, and the current corporate price list has every line item.
Treat the label as a series, not a one-off
This is the part that turns gifting into branding. A single bottle gets opened and forgotten. Three bottles that clearly belong together become a set, and sets get kept on the shelf.
Fix the elements that shouldn’t move. Your mark, your colours, the typeface, where each sits on the label. Then change the elements that should: the year, the varietal, the message, an image tied to what happened that year.
Leave the back label for the words. The front carries the mark and the year, the back carries whatever you’d otherwise have written in a card. It keeps the front clean and gives you somewhere to say something real.
Our graphic team builds the artwork from your logo, colours and any images you send through, and you sign off a proof before anything goes to print. Hang onto those files. The second year is much quicker when you’re adjusting a design rather than starting one.
The logistics that catch people out
Send to a named person, not to reception. Boxes of wine dropped at a front desk on a Friday afternoon have a habit of disappearing over the weekend, and someone must sign for alcohol either way. A short heads-up emails the day before solves most of it.
Check the gift policy before you spend up. Health services, schools, universities and parts of the public sector run gift registers with dollar thresholds, and a $70 bottle can put your contact in an awkward position. Ask first. Where a register applies, keeping the value modest lets them accept it without a conversation they didn’t ask for.
Plenty of people don’t drink, and you often won’t know who. Branded 600mL water at $1.50 a bottle covers events and daytime sessions without anyone having to decline anything.
Freight sits on top of the bottle price, and thirty individual parcels to thirty addresses cost considerably more than one delivery to one office. Work that out before you commit to posting direct to recipients.
Allow 7 to 10 working days from a confirmed order for the print run and remember that clock starts once artwork is approved rather than when you first pick up the phone. For a fixed date, work backwards from the day and add a fortnight for proofs and changes.
Keeping the paperwork straight
Worth knowing before you build this into a budget line: the ATO’s position is that your clients aren’t your employees, so benefits you provide to clients aren’t subject to fringe benefits tax. Gifting to your own staff sits under different rules, and deductibility is a separate question again.
We’re not accountants, so check how it applies to your business before you plan around it. What we would suggest is keeping the invoices together with a simple record of who received what and when. Your accountant will want the first part, and the second part gives you a running list of who you’ve thanked, which is most of the work in running this properly.
Start with twelve
The minimum order is 12 bottles for full size and 24 for the 200mL sparkling. Artwork, labelling and GST are already in the bottle price, with freight on top, and there are discounts once quantities climb.
You don’t need a strategy document to begin. Pick your top twelve relationships, get one label designed properly rather than quickly, and send them. See what comes back before you scale it up.
Call us on 1300 798 098 or get in touch with your list size and a rough budget, and we’ll come back with options and a label proof.
