SANQUER Is The Fictional Liquor You Wish You Could Get Your Hands On

Calvados is a spirit with three main appellations, one of which is made predominantly by the distillation of pears. In doing research on this French spirit, Oleg Zaharevich created SANQUER, a fictive calvados brand. Using CGI, he developed the brand identity, placing particular detail on the bottle’s shape, as well as labeling. In order to reflect the spirit’s main ingredient, he created a pear shaped bottle with an elongated neck and rotund body. Digitally using gold foil, he elegantly designed the label with a combination of fine lines and circles. A minimalist, narrow French flag emblem is included in order to further emphasize the fictional brand’s history and culture.

The idea of this concept came into my mind during the study of calvados production history. One of its types is mostly made from pears. This project is an experiment in creating a bottle shape that visually reflects this feature.

The search yielded a number of shapes: an organic, natural pear silhouette, French vintage perfume vials from around the late 19th or early 20th century, and a classic high-neck calvados bottle.

The peculiarity of this shape is the high contrast between the bottleneck and the main part of the bottle, the hemisphere. The embossing lines that diverge towards the center of the bottle lend a distinctive vintage look to its external image. The lines visually emphasize the overall shape of the bottle and the height of the neck, complicating the image and creating additional refractions in the glass.

The two-component, metal plug has a faceted shape that rhymes with the embossed lines and visually extends them. The debossed top of the plug bears the monogram “AS” from the first letters of the name André Sanquer — a fictional character, the founder of the family distillery, whose surname formed the basis of the trademark.

The thin part of the bottleneck is supported by a small decorative label that solves the colour coding problem.

The main label completely encircles the bottom of the bottle. The materials—beige, textured paper and gold, hot foil stamping—create a strict but neat, soft, pastel image.