shake things up
Karim Rashid has always made it a point to approach design from a brand new perspective, instead of well-trodden paths. That has earned him a reputation as somewhat of an enfant terrible, something that he relishes in his quest to have modern design make sense, not make simulacrums. And as it always is with Karim Rashid, that was the starting point for the decanter he designed for Canadian winemaker Stratus Vineyards.
“The wine industry has always been so conservative and really very reluctant to make a change,” says Rashid, at the launch of the bottle in New York. Taking that as a challenge, he floated a suggestion to his designers – why don’t we just chop up the bottle? So they did. And when they put it back together, they disturbed the traditional shape of the bottle for something a little more deformed and a little more beguiling.
And true to form, this has function. The offset structure might look like an artistic statement, but the groove created by the displaced middle sections serves as a handle for holding and pouring the wine. A wine that is Stratus’ first unfiltered wine, a 2014 Cabernet Franc. Left on its lees to age for longer to improve aroma and taste, the residual particles then get trapped on the angled edges of the dismantled bottle parts, a useful feature that was completely incidental to the design – a happy coincidence found in many of Rashid’s products.
