Waltz Vineyards Estate Winery × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
An August study.
Waltz Vineyards Estate Winery sits on a hilltop farm in Lancaster County that the Waltz family has worked for six generations. Jan Waltz planted premium vinifera on the family land in 1997. The first wine was handcrafted in an exterior garage in 2000, and the tasting room opened its doors in spring 2009. Their creed is disarmingly plain – "great wines are made in the vineyard" – and the invitation beside it is even warmer: "Join for the wine, stay for the community."
They compare their shale-rich hill and its continental climate to Northern Italy and Central France, then make the case in the glass with estate fruit raised in French oak. What won us over, though, is a quieter sentence on their About page: the goal has always been "To be good stewards of the land we have been given."
The mark, as found
A rounded burgundy badge edged with a thin line of warm gold, and at its center one white calligraphic W. Nothing else. It is the kind of mark that presses beautifully, because it already behaves like a stamp.
Pressed
We pressed the W on a trio of luggage tags, standing upright the way the badge itself stands. Deep wine and warm tan take a blind deboss – the burgundy of the badge's own field, and the tan of the French oak the wine matures in. The black tag carries the gold foil pass, the badge's thin gold edge made literal in the leather.
The hill in rows
"Great wines are made in the vineyard," they say, so this design stays there. Inside a barrel-head ring, the hill rises in seven planted rows that follow its contour, and at the crest hangs a single cluster – the whole farm bent toward one bunch of grapes. WALTZ VINEYARDS arcs above, LANCASTER COUNTY below.
On keychains it rides in a pair of deep forest green and honeyed russet – the color of the rows in June, and the color of the rows at harvest.
On the golden tan catchall tray it becomes the place where keys and corkscrews land at the end of an evening.
Six leaves, one cluster
Six generations of Waltzes have farmed this land, and Jan is the sixth. So the second seal draws a single vine cane with six leaves along it, each a little larger than the last, and at the tip the one cluster the whole line was reaching for. Around the rim: ESTATE GROWN, SINCE 1997.
It signs the dopp kits as a small maker's mark in the corner, on a stack of deep espresso brown over chestnut – the browns of shale soil and turned earth.
And it closes the journals, pressed generously into the corner of a duo in deep wine and pale greige – a cellar book and a field book, for tasting notes or the next vintage's plans.
We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this study is one of them, and we hope the feeling is mutual. Every image is a render – how we prototype before cutting a die.
If you're Waltz Vineyards Estate Winery and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.