Saintly Wine
We created a lifestyle brand to drive growth amid a category in decline.
Rosé was the one growth segment in a declining wine category, and Arterra had no stake in it. We found the small group of Zillennial tastemakers the category ignored, built an entirely new brand tailored for them, and positioned it in culture instead of the wine aisle.
It sold out on launch, beat volume targets by 200% in year one, and became Canada’s number one VQA rosé within three years.
#1
VQA Rosé in under 3 years
73%
awareness to trial conversion
200%
of sales volume in year one
Opportunity
Build a new wine brand capable of winning the generation the category was losing.
By 2020, wine consumption was declining as Zillennials failed to enter the category. Heritage cues that had long signalled quality weren’t resonating.
Through audience opportunity mapping and cultural decoding, we uncovered a buyer the category had overlooked: aesthetically driven tastemakers who represented less than 10% of category volume but had outsized influence on what others chose next. They rejected both unattainable luxury and novelty without substance. They wanted elegance without the rules, taste without tradition. No wine had claimed that space.
“Rosé is more than a color: it is a mode of self-expression that captures the moments of spontaneity and inner truth that are the values of millennials.”
Richard Delerins, Anthropologist, 5th International Rosé Symposium
Solution
Don’t launch a wine brand. Build a lifestyle brand Zillennials would drink up.
We built Saintly to behave more like a fashion brand than a wine brand, showing up where style and self-expression shaped culture.
Our brand platform, Rebels Deserve Halos, celebrated individuality and imperfection over convention. It shaped a distinctive tone and aesthetic, a DTC strategy blending product and experience, and a wearable merch line of bespoke products and creator collabs.
When early data revealed Saintly’s exceptional trial-to-conversion rate, we engineered curated sampling moments to enable trial, social amplification and brand connection.
Impact
From non-existent to number one in under 3 years.
Saintly rewrote the rules of Rosé. Demand exceeded availability. It sold out repeatedly and scarcity fueled desirability, doubling volume expectations. By year three, Saintly was number one in its category.
The innovation success story scaled into an eight SKU product portfolio.
People didn’t just buy Saintly; they bought into it.
