An important bottle of whisky encased in Jesmonite

This impressive bottle of whisky is encased in an exclusive Jesmonite packaging – it’s a great team!

We were thrilled when we heard that William Grant & Son, the company behind the well known Glenfiddich whisky brand, identified Jesmonite as a material they wanted to work with.

They wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before and thought up a bold and forward thinking packaging, something you wouldn’t normally associate with the historic Scottish brand.

Marble effect veins

This is a special packaging for release 18 of the 40-year-old whisky, one where only a limited number of bottles are released.  Making the most of the simple stone colour and cold stone feel of AC100, this packaging and matching stopper has dramatic grooves carved into it to expose the intertwining marble-effect veins which flow through it.

William Grant & Son were attracted to the finish and the fact it was a sustainable material – they turned to Here Design to finalise their plans.

Harry Bingham of Here Design said: “Having worked with Glenfiddich to solidify the brand throughout their extensive portfolio, the concept behind the packaging series was to capture time and reimagine it.

“The 40-year-old Single Malt artfully represents the layers of Cumulative Time in the process of making the whisky.

“This exciting material enabled us to create a design that was sculptural, high quality, and truly innovative.

“Just as time is accumulated in layers, Jesmonite is much the same, a fitting choice of material for the 40-year-old casing.”

Technically detailed

The unique idea was taken to south London based manufacturers of display products Zone Creations with the technical challenge of making it a reality.

“It was a huge challenge to produce such a technically detailed presentation case, to the correct high quality, in a material not used for packaging before,” said Jamie Hale, Director at Zone Creations.

“It’s the kind of challenge that we thrive on and the end result is a stunning and innovative pack – there is nothing like this on the market, each one is hand crafted and with each of our artisan creatives working in a slightly different way, they really are unique and each one has its own personality.

“The stopper was a particularly intricate process – as it’s such a small area and we wanted it to look just right, it took just one drop of pigment into the mix.

“As well as being aesthetically pleasing, there are a lot of other points this packaging needed to hit, it needed to be reliable, protect the bottle but keep the weight down too.

“There was rigorous climate testing and it passed all aspects so we were very pleased with the outcome.”

The packaging first launched in the summer of 2022, showcased in Harrods and taken to Luxe Pack, a packaging show in Monaco, in October that year.

For more information on the unique packaging visit the Glenfiddich website here and for more information on Zone Creations and Here Design visit their websites too. What a team!