When we first started out, we had several ideas for a name and a logo, but we wanted something that evoked the image of New Zealand, a country we had come to know and love as our new home and more importantly the origin of the wine we were to create.
One Sunday we were browsing through a curios shop in the little seaside village of Picton, when we saw local handcraft with various forms of fern fronds locally called Koru's, a name and symbol originating from Maori culture. New Zealand is full of ferns and the silver fern is the national emblem. It all started to take shape; we liked the idea very much and decided to create our own koru to use as a logo.
We then also realised that "Koru" could also be a great name for the wines "Koru", besides being typified as an unfolding fern frond, symbolise, new beginning, unfolding life and growth, both physically and spiritually, which, fitted right in with "our story".
We wanted a label that would do justice to our wine and its image, something that incorporated the above but remained classic and simplistic, yet something that was a piece of art by itself. Next we got in touch with a designer who helped us put in print what we had in our heads.
The Koru logo was hand drawn, true to our philosophy of "hand made" and it's done in a unique colour of native abalone shell, locally called paua.
In New Zealand there is lots of beautiful jewellery made from the shiny inside of paua shell. Jasper dives whenever he can and our house is full of paua shells. We have always felt that paua jewellery is the most beautiful, most natural ornament one could have.
The paua colours illustrate our love and closeness to the sea. Paua also has a legendry Maori story of its own, with great symbolism and moral.
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The legend has it that Paua was very sad because it was an ugly and boring grey sea animal. Tangaroa, god of the sea, saw this and gave Paua a beautiful multi-coloured, mother-of-pearl coloured shell, but with the beautiful colours secretly on the inside. |
