STOIC — Brand Book

How to read this

Derived, not invented

Nothing in this document was designed from scratch. The palette was sampled from the printed label artwork pixel by pixel. The copy is transcribed off the bottles. The naming system comes from the original conversations where the brand was named. Where something could not be verified, it says so in red.

IThe premise IIBrand architecture IIIThe naming system IVMarks & lockups VTypography VIColour VIIVoice VIIIThe labels IXOpen items

I

The premise

Most wine is named for a place or a family. STOIC is named for an idea, and every bottle carries a Latin virtue on the front with the reason for it on the back. The wine is the medium. The virtue is the product.

Name	STOIC
Tagline	Virtue in a Bottle
Descriptor	Family Wine
Domain	stoicvines.com
Home	Temecula Valley, California
Identity	A Sicilian family. An Italian grape, an Italian family, a Roman philosophy — all pointing the same direction.
Estate fruit	Nebbiolo. ~375 vines planted March 2025. First harvest 2028; first drinkable estate wine around 2030.
Production	McClain Cellars, Buellton, CA — merged with Vito La Fata and the La Fata brand.

Why Nebbiolo. Piedmont is the world's first producer. Valle de Guadalupe is the second — and Temecula and Valle de Guadalupe are considered sister regions. If the second-best expression on earth grows in our valley's twin, and almost nobody here plants it, that is both a uniqueness play and a full circle.

II

Brand architecture

Two lines sit under STOIC. They share a parent and a production standard. They deliberately do not share a visual language.

Line	What it is	Visual world
The Virtue Series	The numbered releases. One Latin virtue each. Release I is Patientia, a 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon.	Cream, gold laurel, Roman inscriptional capitals.
Ducks in a Row	The Mission Bottle. A Sauvignon Blanc in memory of Sandi Joyce Winger, supporting Hospice of the Valley.	Lake blue, watercolour, gold heart. Its own world.

Do

Keep Ducks in a Row visually separate. It is a memorial, not an installment.
Endorse it in words — “A STOIC Mission Bottle”.
Give it a coloured tag wherever it appears alongside the virtue wines.

Don't

Put the laurel mark on a Ducks in a Row bottle or page.
Let Lake Blue leak into the Virtue Series. The moment it becomes a general secondary, the mission bottle stops being distinct.
Number Ducks in a Row as part of the series.

III

The naming system

Each release takes its name from one Latin virtue. Release I is Patientia — patience — paired with Marcus Aurelius. The virtue changes every release. That much is settled.

Open decision. Whether the Stoic figure rotates with the virtue (Model A) or Marcus Aurelius stays permanently as the face of the brand (Model B). This decides whether the coin portrait belongs in the logo or on the bottle. Both are kept open by using a laurel + wordmark + tagline lockup — with no portrait — everywhere except the bottle itself.

The virtue bench

Latin	Virtue	Note
Patientia	Patience	Released — 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon
Fortitudo	Courage	Cardinal virtue
Prudentia	Wisdom	Cardinal virtue
Iustitia	Justice	Cardinal virtue
Temperantia	Temperance	Cardinal virtue
Gratia	Gratitude	Stoic canon
Profectus	Progress	“Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.” The most personal of the candidates — it came from the family, not from a list.

Latin virtue above the varietal, always. The virtue is the name; the grape is the specification. Virtue names are set in capitals and never italicised — they are inscriptions. The translation gloss is italic: (Latin for patience).

IV

Marks & lockups

An open gold laurel wreath — the Roman civic crown, the reward for virtue — above Roman inscriptional capitals. The entire brand thesis in one shape.

PRIMARY

Site header, packaging, anywhere the brand speaks. Correct under both naming models.

RELEASE

Bottle labels only. The coin portrait belongs to the bottle, not the brand.

WORDMARK

Tight horizontal space — footers, capsule, cork.

LAUREL

Favicon, wax seal, glassware, merchandise.

Governance

Minimum 180px wide for the primary lockup on screen. Below that, drop to the wordmark alone.
Clear space on all sides equal to the height of one laurel wreath.
Letterspacing on the wordmark is structural, not styling — it is what makes it read as carved rather than typed.

Never

Fill the gap between the laurel tips.
Stretch, rotate, arch, or add shadow, bevel or gradient to any mark.
Recolour outside the palette in section VI.
Set the wordmark in a non-inscriptional typeface.

V

Typography

Roman inscriptional capitals for display; a high-contrast old-style serif for reading. Wide letterspacing is the brand's most consistent typographic signal.

Unverified. The printed label was built in Adobe Illustrator, so the true font names live in that source file. Cinzel — used throughout this document and the website — is a licence-free Trajan-class equivalent and is a visual match, not a confirmed identification. Get the .ai file before anything goes to print.

Display · Cinzel · tracking .16em

PATIENTIA

Subhead · Cinzel · uppercase · tracking .24em

Cabernet Sauvignon

Body · Cormorant Garamond

Patientia is the quiet force behind every great wine. Vines wait years for their first harvest, and the wine then rests in barrel until time has done its work.

Label / eyebrow · Cinzel · tracking .30em

Virtue in a Bottle

Do

Set eyebrows and labels in capitals at .18–.32em tracking.
Hold body copy to 65–75 characters a line.
Italicise the Latin gloss, never the virtue itself.

Don't

Use a sans-serif for anything a customer reads for pleasure.
Set long body copy in Cinzel. It is a display face.
Tighten the wordmark's tracking to fit a space — change the lockup instead.

VI

Colour

Every value below was sampled from the printed artwork, not chosen. Cream is the brand's ground because the labels are printed on cream stock — the website defaults to light for the same reason.

Parchment

#FBF4E5

The ground. Label stock, page background.

Parchment Deep

#F9F3DD

Warmer print variant. Cards and insets.

Ink

#1E1E1D

Headlines and body. A warm near-black — never pure black.

Laurel Gold

#D5BE85

The laurel and the coin, as printed.

Antique Gold

#CAAF54

Deeper print gold. Rules and emphasis.

Screen Gold

#B99A3F

Small caps and hairlines on screen, where the lighter golds fail contrast.

Stone

#6B6355

Secondary text. Warm — biased toward the parchment, never a cool grey.

Lake Blue

#456687

Ducks in a Row only. Dusk over still water.

Gold is never a body-text colour. It fails contrast at reading sizes. Gold is for rules, small capitals, and the laurel.

VII

Voice

Derived from what is actually printed on the two back labels — not from a positioning exercise.

It sounds like a family explaining itself at their own table. Plain declaratives. Latin used precisely and then translated, never dropped for effect. Concrete numbers over adjectives — “three years in the ground, two in barrel” beats “painstakingly aged.” Warmth without sentimentality.

Two rules, both taken from the bottles

Teach, then toast. Both back labels explain the idea before inviting you to drink.
Say the hard thing plainly. The Ducks label says “when cancer unexpectedly shortened her journey.” Not “passed away.” Not “her battle.” The plainness is what makes it land.

Never sounds like

Tasting notes — “hints of cassis and forest floor.”
Luxury abstraction — “an uncompromising expression of terroir.”
Club urgency — “don't miss out,” countdown timers, manufactured scarcity.

The test: if a sentence could appear on any other winery's website, it isn't STOIC's.

VIII

The labels

The Patientia front label rebuilt on the current brandmark, and the mission bottle as printed.

STOIC Patientia Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 front label — Virtue Series — Release I

Ducks in a Row Sauvignon Blanc front label — The Mission Bottle — front

Ducks in a Row back label — The Mission Bottle — back

Patientia, back label, as printed. Patientia (Latin for patience) is the quiet force behind every great wine. Vines wait years for their first harvest, and the wine then rests in barrel until time has done its work. In our family we teach the same virtue to our kids: think in decades, not days, and remember that good things come to those who can delay gratification. This is STOIC — virtue in a bottle.

Front-label stack, in order: laurel → STOIC → VIRTUE IN A BOTTLE → coin → the Latin virtue → the varietal → vintage left, region right, inside a double gold keyline. Regulatory text lives on the physical bottle and is deliberately absent from product imagery.

IX

Open items

What this document cannot yet answer, and who has to answer it.

The .ai source files. Confirms the real typefaces and spot-colour builds. Everything in section V is a visual identification until then.
The naming model. Does Marcus Aurelius stay permanently, or does the figure rotate with the virtue? Decides whether the coin sits in the logo or on the bottle.
Release II. Not needed to launch, but the virtue series reads stronger with a named next.
Ducks in a Row label version. Three exist — separate front and back, or a single wrap-around. Recommend the wrap-around: it keeps the dedication and the artwork visible together on shelf.
Per-bottle donation. The label says “created in support of.” A specific figure is not set, so no page states one.
Hospice of the Valley sign-off. Dom's wife serves on the board, which helps — but using the name on a commercial storefront should be confirmed in writing.
Shipping states. 46 or 50. The site currently says 46.