FIELDEN: GRAIN CHANGING - We All Need Words

Most old-school whiskies come with a backstory about an eccentric founder and a spring with near-mystical qualities. But the grains that go into the whisky? You never hear much about those. That’s because this part of the story isn’t quite as whimsical. Most grains in whisky are grown industrially, with chemicals: same grain, same height, same flavour.

Enter Fielden, who are bringing England’s fields back to life with heritage grains grown on regenerative farms. Their grains grow in white clover (without any chemicals) in fields full of plants, wildflowers and insects.

When you write about a brand that’s genuinely changing the way grains are grown and fields are farmed, the hardest thing to grapple with is “greenwash” and simpler (but often murkier) eco claims. “Carbon neutral” (or “negative”) is a classic case in point: it can just mean business as usual while paying to plant trees elsewhere. “Carbon neutral airports”, we’re looking at you…

We know from our work with Honest Burgers that regenerative farming isn’t easy to sum up in a soundbite. For Fielden, we had to get an environmental message across to a whisky-buying audience without overloading them with farming terminology or over-simplifying what’s involved.

MAKE A STATEMENT: we created WILD AND GLORIOUS as Fielden’s word mark, along with a series of statements about how they’re changing farming and whisky. These work as single lines or in pairs to match Made Thought’s visual idenity, linking what you can see above ground (tall stems and wild fields) with what’s going on below (deep roots and healthy soil).

UNSHOWY: to stand out from greenwash, we wrote about how Fielden’s doing things differently in a strident but spare tone (and without empty “planet friendly” catch-alls).

IN THE FIELDS: we also helped shape Fielden’s brand strategy and wrote their brand guidelines. While their distillery, stills and casks all play their parts, Fielden put the fields first, mud and all.

And instead of writing about distilling and ageing, Fielden write about the depth of flavours from the heritage grains. In these tasting notes we’re deliberately writing about wild berries and hedgerows to evoke the countryside, while baked bread nods to the harvest.

Visual identity by Made Thought and more design by NotonSunday.