Packaging in the Wine & Spirits sector is no longer merely an aesthetic or functional element. It has become a language capable of telling stories of identity, building value, and engaging with an increasingly aware consumer. In a highly competitive market, the label helps define brand positioning, guide choices on the shelf, and strengthen the relationship with the public. It was precisely around these themes that the second Wine Innovation Day by All4Labels took place on March 5 at Palazzo Visconti in Milan: an event that brings together key players in the wine segment within an international roadshow.
A global vision for packaging
Opening the day was Enrico Valeri, EVP Segment Food at All4Labels, who highlighted the importance of dialogue across the entire value chain. This was followed by Paola Iannone, VP Marketing & Communication, who presented the vision that guided the design of the international roadshow. The initiative stems from All4Labels’ strategic approach and from the belief that innovation emerges from the integration of expertise and direct engagement with the market. This is how All4Labels interprets its role as a “partner in labels”: listening to the needs of brands to create solutions that generate value, leveraging the potential of the most advanced technologies to design distinctive and functional labels, while also capitalizing on its role as a global leader in the development of innovative labelling solutions.
The Milan Innovation Day represents the core of this journey, a moment designed to explore the industry’s challenges, including those posed by new sustainability regulations, and to anticipate distinctive solutions.
Completing the picture was Guido Iannone, the group’s Chief Sales Officer, who described the company’s international positioning and the growing role of labels in brand development. “For us, creating value does not simply mean enhancing the product through printing”, he explained. “It means standing alongside clients from the earliest design stages to build a strong identity together. Today packaging is much more than a technical support: it is a strategic element in the relationship between product, brand and consumer”.
Packaging and the market: when design changes sales
Providing the perspective of the wine industry was Giacomo Tarquini, Chief Marketing Officer of Argea Group, who explained how packaging can have a tangible impact on market performance. In the case of a project aimed at the Scandinavian market, rethinking the visual identity helped relaunch a struggling product. “Packaging didn’t just shift our sales; in a way it saved the company. We changed the paradigm: we no longer tell only the story of the product itself, but of what the consumer wants to be through that product”.
According to Tarquini, the wine sector must also learn to use more structured analytical tools: “there is a lot of talk about tradition and passion, but marketing remains an economic science: you have to study the data and understand consumer behaviour”.
Branding and brand storytelling
If packaging can become a market lever, it is also one of the most powerful tools for building brand identity. This was illustrated through a more “romantic” approach by Barbara Darra, Marketing Manager of Mezzacorona Group, who described the label as “the wine’s first advertisement. It is the first point of contact between the product and the consumer”. For a group with such a strong territorial connection as Mezzacorona, design becomes a tool to translate this identity into a contemporary visual language capable of engaging with international markets. Much like in a film, every element must follow a precise script, where packaging becomes one of the main instruments for staging the brand’s values and making them recognizable over time.
The pursuit of beauty
One of the most evocative moments of the day was the talk by Mario Di Paolo of SPAZIO DI PAOLO, one of the most awarded designers in the world of wine packaging, who brought the discussion to a broader, almost philosophical, level about the meaning of beauty in design. Di Paolo emphasized that design cannot be limited to responding to technical or commercial needs but must continue to cultivate a creative dimension capable of generating wonder and imagination. “Beauty is something we should cultivate like a ritual, it is a form of protection from habit and a drive to imagine new things”, he explained.
In wine packaging, this means having the courage to move beyond established solutions and explore new expressive languages, working with materials, surfaces and details to create objects that speak not only to the market but also to people’s sensibilities. “Being a little strange, sometimes, is a value” the designer observed. “You must have the courage to break the rules and step outside the ordinary, because that’s where the most interesting ideas can emerge”.
Materials, embellishments and the value of detail
It is precisely in materials that this vision takes concrete form. Papers, surfaces and special finishing processes become design tools capable of influencing product perception and reinforcing value. To explain the role of embellishments in packaging, Alessandro Carnevale, Brand Ambassador of Luxoro, used a musical metaphor: “in a memorable song it is often a small detail that stays in your memory. The same happens in packaging: it’s that particular element that catches the eye on the shelf and makes the product recognizable”. Technologies such as hot stamping, foils and microtextures now allow designers to work on these details with great precision.
Marco Gelain, International Business Development at Avery Dennison, instead illustrated some of the most interesting developments in the field of self-adhesive materials, from sensory papers to solutions designed to improve label resistance in critical conditions.
Sustainability, innovation and smart labels
Another central topic was sustainability. Silvia D’Alesio, Politecnico di Milano, offered an overview of the regulatory and design challenges related to circular packaging, with particular reference to the new European regulation on packaging. In this context, the label plays an increasingly key role, as it must reconcile regulatory requirements, communication and sustainability.
Matteo Dosso Project Artworks & Innovation Manager then presented some of the innovations developed by All4Labels, illustrating the technological solutions the group is investing to make packaging increasingly efficient and sustainable. Among these are StarDirect and StarShine, technologies designed to reduce material usage and optimize production processes while offering new creative possibilities in label design.
Simone Lombardo presented the solutions developed by Integritag, a company part of All4Labels group, specialized in smart labels. Technologies such as RFID and NFC make it possible to integrate security, traceability and digital content directly into the label.
If there is one element that this day clearly highlighted, it is how packaging in the wine & spirits sector has become a meeting ground for different areas of expertise. A field where strategy, product culture and industrial innovation increasingly intersect. The value of All4Labels roadshow lies precisely in this: creating opportunities for dialogue between worlds that often work in parallel and transforming that dialogue into new design ideas.
The next stop will be in Santiago, Chile, where the group operates one of its sites. Another step in a journey that does not simply describe the world of wine packaging but anticipates its future evolution.
