Our love of wine inspired us to create our first art prints. I started the Top Note Design journey back in 2012 along with my cousin, Alice Dunhill. For some time my husband, Henry (a true wine connsoisseur) had been collecting foil capsules from some of his favourite bottles of wine. Alice and I noticed how textural and interesting some of these were. We decided to see if we could work together to create some artwork bring these small, intricate designs to life. Above all, we wanted to capture the essence of some our favourite wines. In 2013 we successfully exhibited our first range of giclée prints featuring 6 wines from the Rhone Valley. A White Burgundy collection followed soon after.
From these beginnings Top Note Design has grown into a whole range of gifts for wine lovers sold alongside some of our favourite wine accessories. As the number of wine gadgets we stock has grown our focus has shifted away from our capsule artwork. However, recently a few customers have been asking for details of our prints. Therefore this seems a good time to bring some of them back. I’ve added a few to the website where we have some left of the edition. We will be printing them to order and selling them unframed.
How our limited edition wine prints are made
Each print begins with an actual wine capsule. We then begin to reimagine it in colour taking inspiration from the landscape that has created the wines. Our Rhone collection uses the grey of the galets roulés, the stones that surround the vines of Chateauneuf du Pape, alongside deep rich colours redolent of the grapes of Southern France. In contrast our Burgundy collection emphasis lighter colour suitable for a cooler region with more delicate grapes and wine of greater minerality.
We are re-introducing four of our most popular prints to our range. Two Rhone prints, Chateauneuf du Pape and Jaboulet together with two prints from our Burgundy range, Louis Latour and Chablis. We use fine art Photo Rag paper to achieve texture and depth. Each print is signed, numbered and dated.
Wine Prints to Order
Our prints are created to order using a fine art digital printing process called Giclée. The word giclée comes from the verb gicler meaning to squirt or to spray. I recently discovered the brilliant South London based specialist printmakers, Just Giclée. Their printing methods involve using pigment based inks on high quality papers to achieve really prints with superior light fastness and stability. Their client list includes Dulwich Picture Gallery among others. I’m sure you will be thrilled with the results.
New Wine Artwork from Brushery
As well as reintroducing our own original prints to our range I’m also going to be stocking another range of wine inspired art prints. These premium wine maps are designed in Sweden by Brushery. They launched in 2020 and have stockists in Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and the USA. I’m keen to offer their designs to our customers in the UK and so I’m starting with some of their bestselling designs. Firstly a collection of French wine regions, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and Rhone. Then I just couldn’t resist adding Barolo in Italy. These hand drawn maps are not only beautiful pieces of art they are also a wonderful way to improve your knowledge of each region and the wine that comes from there.
