Artefact was started in the summer of 2019 by three mates — Rob Corbett, Luke Harbor and Tommy Gillard — with a simple idea: to make a wine that “captured the feeling of a year: unconventional, memorable, surprising.”
Between them, the three know a thing or two about wine and design. Luke is beverage director at the prestigious Pig Hotels, Rob owns Castlewood Vineyard in East Devon along the Jurassic Coast, and Tommy is an award-winning filmmaker that brings the artistic eye behind every label.
They decided to build the project around the sustainably grown Bacchus already planted at Castlewood. For the winemaking, they wanted to do something different, so they sourced two clay Tuscan amphorae. Each wine is produced by vintage, using low-intervention methods: hand harvesting, wild yeast for fermentation and minimal additions, allowing every year to speak for itself.
That same ethos, capturing the feeling of a year, carries through to the label, which is completely redesigned for every vintage. The 2023 label (see image below), for example, draws on the Byzantine-era mosaic discovered under an olive orchard in the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. The grout was hand-drawn and over 12,000 individually painted tiles were placed one by one, replicating the original technique, no two tiles alike. Hidden within the design are moments that defined the year: a year of strikes, a nod to a famous pop star, a submarine crash, and a few more we’ll leave for you to spot.
One thing’s for certain: this wine is unique from start to finish, and with only 1,200 bottles made, it’s just as fleeting as the years it captures.
For more information, visit artefactwine.com.
