The Gandesa Cooperative, founded in 1919, presented its new brand identity to the media this week. A repositioning that does not change what the cooperative is, but for the first time shifts from explaining what it does to explaining who it is.
The new brand slogan, “Proudly Nonconformist Since 1919,” is the result of reflection and responds to a pattern formed by four major decisions taken over the last 107 years. In 1919, when phylloxera had devastated Terra Alta, forty-eight families did not build four walls. They called César Martinell, a disciple of Gaudí, and with their own hands built a Modernist cathedral. Today it is the Seventh Wonder of Catalonia. In 1936, in the middle of the war, they created Vermut Terralta, a single-serving vermouth with a label designed by one of the finest poster artists of the time, and displayed it at Barcelona’s Monumental arena. In the 1980s, the Cooperative produced the first aged Crianza wine in the region while table wine and bulk wine dominated the surrounding area. In 2002, they invested five million euros in the best winery possible when they could simply have patched up the old one. Every time, the context told them: do the minimum. Every time, they did the opposite.
“We looked back and realized we had always done the same thing. We could always have done less. We never did. That has a name: nonconformism. We did not invent it. We discovered it,” says President Pere Bové.
The fifth decision: pride
Today the wine sector is undergoing a period of transformation. Sales are declining, the market has become saturated, and the Gandesa Cooperative, as in its previous major decisions, takes a step forward: in its fifth major decision, it chooses to explain who it is, proudly, through three specific branding decisions: not hiding that it is a cooperative. Not hiding that it is from Gandesa. And not making anything up.
“Some brands need to invent a story. We have one hundred years of documented facts. There is no need to invent anything. We simply need to explain what already exists.”
Redefining what it means to be a cooperative
One of the central objectives of the new positioning is to demonstrate that being a cooperative is synonymous with quality, local production, humanity, and a living territory.
“Being a cooperative does not mean being bulk wine. Being from a village does not mean being second-rate. Today, being a cooperative is modern: it means local production, collective effort, roots, and thinking in generations rather than quarters.”
President Pere Bové illustrated this with a specific story: the 107-year-old vine planted by his great-grandfather. “At home we have a vineyard that is 107 years old, dating from 1919. My great-grandfather planted it. It yields less than half the grapes of a young vineyard. The numbers do not add up. A modern winery would have uprooted it thirty years ago. We have not uprooted it because we are a cooperative. That vine produces some of the best grapes we have. And every year it reminds us why we do what we do. We are now in the fifth generation, and this vineyard produced the wine used for Terra Alta’s first Crianza in 1988. Forty years later, it still produces Puresa, our single-varietal wine from historic vineyards.”
New logo and new visual materials
The new logo takes the architectural form of Martinell’s cathedral and transforms it into a G: the initial of Gandesa built using the same geometry that supports the building’s arches. From here, the Cooperative will gradually unveil the complete renewal of the brand: new labels across all ranges, new products, and a new website. Communications will reveal the stories of the cooperative that showcase its nonconformist character.
The new labels for the Gandesola range, unveiled today for the first time, are a visible expression of the new positioning. The white, red, and rosé wines feature labels depicting three nonconformist characters: village people who are not satisfied with an ordinary tractor (red wine), who dance with their feet on the ground but their heads in the sky (white wine), and who do not follow trends but instead have character (rosé wine).
Messerols: a new wine that returns to traditional methods
The cooperative also presented Messerols, a skin-contact Garnacha Blanca wine that represents a return to its roots. “We have poured our hearts into it. Messerols is a white wine made with grape skins, just as it was traditionally made here in our land, long before anyone called it orange wine. A return to the origin, made with the same attitude that led us to build, with our own hands and through hard work, a Modernist winery—today the Seventh Wonder of Catalonia—when we could simply have put up four concrete walls,” explains the label.
Messerols is a Garnacha Blanca wine from middle-aged vineyards, macerated and fermented with the skins for twelve days, unfiltered, with an alcohol content of 14.2%. The name Messerols refers to a local plot of land, following the cooperative’s tradition of naming its wines after places in Terra Alta.
Nonconformism and craftsmanship in the age of AI
Gandesa’s new positioning goes beyond wine. The cooperative embraces the challenge of celebrating and promoting a way of doing things that it considers increasingly valuable.
“We live in a time when artificial intelligence can do everything faster. We believe that in a world where everything is automated, the value of things made by real people, with judgment, time, and pride, does not decrease. It increases. The nonconformism of work well done is the most radical response to the world of AI,” says Bové.
Gaudí’s legacy in Gandesa
The year 2026 marks the centenary of Antoni Gaudí’s death. “Part of him remained in Gandesa. César Martinell, from Gaudí’s closest circle, built the Wine Cathedral in 1919—seven years before the master’s death—using the same parabolic arches found in Palau Güell, La Pedrera, and the Sagrada Família. He did not build it by copying Gaudí. He built it by continuing him,” explains Bové.
A manifesto video to close the event
The event concluded with the screening of the brand manifesto video, filmed in Terra Alta, which condenses into images the story of nonconformism that the cooperative has spent one hundred years building through actions.