How To Make Your Own Private Label Wine

Making your own wine isn't easy, but it doesn't need to be a distant dream either. With a bit of knowledge and the right winery partner, you can bring your wine brand dreams to life! With Pallet Wine Company, our low minimum order quantity for your custom label wine is unrivalled: we require an order quantity of just three cases (12x750ml bottles). We can help make your private label wine ideas a reality!

Step 1: Choose a varietal.

There are two main ways to make wine: with grapes grown by farmers or with grapes grown by yourself. Whether you're going to grow wine grapes yourself or buy grapes grown by farmers and viticulturists, you should choose a grape variety that's well suited to growing in your area. This will ensure that you get the best possible results when you make your wine. There's a third, compelling option: work with a custom winemaking facility, which will have expertise in what grows well in the local region, existing grape sourcing options, and the production facility to make, bottle, and ship your wine.

Step 2: Find a supplier.

Once you've chosen a grape variety, you need to find a supplier who grows them. Most suppliers sell grapes at wholesale prices, so you won't have to pay retail prices. For the sakes of both grapes growers and grape buyers, you might need to contractually commit to a confirmed quantity of grapes, because some growers only produce enough grapes for themselves, and prune back vines if they are more producing more grapes than what the grower needs.

At Pallet Wine Company, we are uniquely positioned to help private label customers bring their wine dreams to life. We work with several grapegrowers across Oregon, own and operate our own winemaking, cellaring, and wine bottling program, and have an expert in-house team to help facilitate the complicated world that is wine production, labeling, and distribution.

Step 3: Decide what kind of packaging you want.

Great, you've found your ideal custom crush partner! If you're buying wines in advance of the grape harvest, winemaking production process, and bottling, you may have the ability to work with your custom crush facility to decide on a certain type of bottle, or whether you want to use corks or screwcaps as closures. Corks are more traditional, but screwcaps are easier to open and close.

If you'll be sourcing already-bottled wines, or "shiners", you'll have less options for packaging choices, but plenty of options for label production specifications. Do you want a thick or a thin paperstock? Do you want watertight paper that will withstand being soaked in an ice tub, or are you creating a red wine which will never be iced? Do you want a flat or embossed label? Is it a standard shaped-label, or a custom dieprint? All of these options will help you bring your wine brand vision to life, and will influence label printing costs.

Step 4: Design your label.

Once you've decided what type of bottle and label you'd like to use, you'll need to design your label. Bottle shape and size variations can be a critical component in determing the ideal label size, orientation, and design. Label design can be done in-house if it's a DIY project, or for more professional designs, by utilizing your company's in-house or contracted graphic designer. Label design is a complex art, and is more than just choosing a font style, color scheme, and a logo. For alcohol packaging specifically, there are certain federal requirements of mandatory messaging and details that must be included in the label. We can help you navigate these complexities. It's what we do!

Step 5: Leave the rest to us.

If you work with Pallet Wine Company for your private label wine, we're going to take care of everything else so you can focus on building your brand! We work with private label clients of all shapes and sizes across the United States, and are unique in our ability to work with private label orders of any size. Starting at just a one case minimum! We will help you every step of the way, so you feel confident sharing and selling your new private label wine. Contact us today to see how we can help bring your wine dreams to life.