THE CLIENT
Five generations of the Wagner family have farmed the eastern shore of Seneca Lake. Bill Wagner broke ground on his distinctive eight-sided winery in Lodi, New York in 1979 — before the Farm Winery Act even passed — and built one of the most recognized wine destinations in the Finger Lakes. Today, Wagner cultivates 250 acres, produces 50,000 cases annually, and welcomes more than 100,000 visitors each year.
The credentials are significant. Wagner was named Winery of the Year at the 2019 New York Wine Classic — described by the press as “The Oscars” of New York wine — out of 113 wineries and 883 entries statewide. Three wines scored 90+ at the 2020 Sommeliers Choice Awards, earning recognition among the best Riesling producers in the country. That same property is also home to Wagner Valley Brewing Co., established in 1997 — the first craft brewery on Seneca Lake and one of the oldest in the Finger Lakes. The brewery adheres to the Reinheitsgebot of 1516 and has earned numerous GABF, World Beer Cup, and Tap NY medals. All of it sits in a region Wine Enthusiast named its 2025 American Wine Region of the Year.
THE WORK
Wagner is not one brand. It is a 45-year-old estate winery, an award-winning craft brewery with its own distinct traditions, and a full-service restaurant — all under one roof, one name, and one family.
BWM has worked across both sides of that identity. On the brewery side, we designed and implemented a new design system for the Wagner Valley Brewing Co. canned beer series — a visual language that works across multiple SKUs, holds up at retail, communicates the brewery’s character in seconds, and scales to every new release without starting over. On the winery side, BWM designed the label for the Lone Oak Vineyard Cabernet Franc 2022 — Wagner’s first-ever single vineyard Cabernet Franc release in their nearly 50-year history. The 2022 growing season was exceptionally warm and dry, producing what Wagner’s winemaking team described as some of the ripest fruit ever grown from the block just north of the winery. A historic first deserved a label built for the occasion.
The measure of good packaging design is that no one talks about it. Consumers comment on the beer, on the wine — they pick it up, they drink it, they come back. The design did its job upstream, invisibly. That’s the standard BWM designs to.
WHAT BWM DID
Brave World Media designed and implemented a new design system for the Wagner Valley Brewing Co. canned beer series, and has continued as a design partner on special projects for both the winery and the brewery.
A design system for a canned beer series is more than a label. It’s a set of visual decisions — typography, color logic, illustration approach, hierarchy, material feel — that have to work across multiple SKUs, hold up at retail scale, and communicate the brewery’s identity in the time it takes someone to pick up a can and decide whether to buy it. It’s a system that has to scale: every new beer that comes out of Wagner’s 20-BBL brew house should be able to live inside it without requiring a design decision from scratch each time.
The work BWM has done across both the winery and the brewery reflects a longer creative partnership — one built on understanding not just what Wagner makes, but what Wagner is: a multi-generational family business that has built something genuinely rare in American wine and beer, rooted in a specific place, producing at a level recognized nationally and internationally.
WHY THIS WORK IS MEANINGFUL
Packaging and brand design for a producer of this caliber carries real stakes. Wagner wines are reviewed by national publications. Wagner beers compete at GABF and the World Beer Cup. Their visitors include serious wine travelers coming to one of the most celebrated wine regions in the country. The visual identity of Wagner’s products doesn’t just serve local consumers — it represents the brand in contexts where it will be compared against the best producers in America.
BWM brought to this work the same thing we bring to every creative engagement: a genuine understanding of the place these products come from, the people behind them, and the audience they’re made for. That’s what regional partnership looks like — and it’s what makes the difference between design that’s technically competent and design that’s actually true.
