stuff I built in the wine world

El Celler Català was my online Catalan wine shop from 1998-2007 and where I learnt most of what is important. Even websites that don't sell things require the same clarity of purpose as an e-commerce site, and I try to bring that experience to all my work.

The Denominació d'Origen Tarragona is the official site of this local wine area. They originally called me for SEO issues, but it ended up being a complete rebranding job.

La Baronne is a cellar in Languedoc that makes wonderful rich Mediterranean wines. Their Syrah and old-vine Carignan are to die for...

Ronco del Gnemiz make seriously good wines in Friuli, up near the Slovenian border. Serena is brave enough to ask her clients to provide the tasting notes to her wines on the site, rather than relying on the usual suspects.

Carlania Celler is a young new producer not far from home. They're doing some interesting things with the local Trepat grape, and so far seem to be blogging quite enthusiastically.

Nec-Otium Part negotiant in the traditional French sense, part producer in their own right. Lots of interesting Friulan wine stuff going on at Nec-Otium.

Sirch is another youngish producer in Friuli, producing great, simple, honest, inexpensive wines. A couple of big awards in 08 (including "best QPR wine in Italy") gave Luca Sirch a kick-start to commercial success.

De Vinis is one of Spain's leading wine blogs, and Joan shares with me a soft spot for Italy... This project involved redesigning the Blogger templates and coming up with the new logo of the blog.

The Wine Trio are three wine agents working to bring exciting Italian wineries to the attention of the international market. Endlessly extendible, it is built in php to be completely maintained by the client.

Parxet is actually four sites in one: Marqués de Alella, Tionio and Basagoiti are all part of the same group. We used an identical design for all four, with different colour schemes to match each cellar.

Raim500 is the web of a local farmers association (all of whom have vineyards over 500m altitude) dedicated to raising the profile of their region. I was particularly pleased with the google maps-database integration to trace every single vineyard.

Albet i Noya is the leading producer of organic wine in Spain. As a web project, they had a great story to tell. I did their original site in 2002, and this 2006 upgrade based on the concept of their label designer, Gerard Medina.

Fabrizio Iuli is a great friend who makes wonderful wine in Piemonte, northern Italy. He recently had his entire range of labels redesigned, and I've always wanted to make a black site! I recently added a direct sales facility.

Eugenio Bocchino is another great winemaker in Piemonte working with Nebbiolo and Barbera. At the top of an interesting range of wines he makes a stunning Barolo. A relatively simple site designed for clarity and ease of use.

Having done Albet i Noya's site and Alta Alella's, it was fairly logical to do Mas Igneus' site too (it's owned by those two cellars). Like most of my recent work, incorporates a blog as the news page. Can I get them to keep it up to date?

Château Sainte Barbe is my first French client... a wonderful Bordeaux château that has been painstakingly restored. Also my first use of Flash (which I'd been resisting) but which I think is justified here to be able to show the transformation of the estate.

Alta Alella is a small winery just north of Barcelona, run by one of Spain's leading winemakers, Josep Maria Pujol-Busquets. The site is loosely based around their labels, although there was a bit of a challenge reconciling two brands under one site.

Celler Puig-Romeu is a small project in inland Penedès making some interesting, relatively high altitude wines. With no corporate design to speak of to base it around, the photography takes on additional importance.

not only wine...

John le Carré Official Author's Site. This was a huge thrill to do, because I'm a fan. I'd probably have done it for a couple of signed copies... What more can I say?

Smiley's People is of course a spin-off from the main le Carré site, dedicated to the books featuring George Smiley. My first experience with opening up a google map for user input.

X-Label. All these wine producers in the left hand column need to get their labels from somewhere... My first extensive use of stock imagery, but it worked out OK!

Tour Serveis supply sound and lighting gear for concerts. I'm quite pleased with the division of the site into 2 distinct sections depending on whether the visitor knows what they're looking for or not... which was my idea!

Profile Matters is a PR consultancy / training service. The site is still a bit short on imagery at launch, but otherwise clean and functional. More php as it will be a very dynamic, frequently updated site.

Batall is a local management / production company in the music world. Designed to be completely updateable by the staff, making it my first 100% php project. There's a slight tradeoff losing a little graphic beauty for a whole lot of functionality, but it's worth it.

David Newman's sculpture site was a welcome break from wine - and a nice change to do something minimalist and clean letting the works speak for themselves - even if cutting sculptures out of their backgrounds is not the easiest job!

Music on the Edge : Built in January 2000, and revamped a number of times thereafter, the site focuses on five modern jazz bands. It includes Audio clips to hear samples of each of the featured artists: Addressed primarily to festival programmers and agents.