Hualta
Hospitality · the first urban winery hotel in the Americas. Curio Collection by Hilton.
Naming and visual identity.
The first urban winery hotel in the Americas
If Mendoza is the land of the sun, our wineries take care of the good wine. But? There is always a but. A but that encourages more than a few to keep visiting our wonderful province and to enjoy the same experiences in a different format, one that combines relaxation with the ever-present wish to travel through the senses.
What is it all about?
Meet Hualta. The first urban winery hotel in the Americas, located at KM 0 of the city of Mendoza, one of the seven World Wine Capitals. It belongs to the Hilton by Curio chain, and the whole theme revolves around wine tourism. The biggest novelty is that inside the hotel there is a small winery and underground cellar belonging to Bodega Huentala Wines.
Argency was commissioned to create the naming and the visual identity for the first and only urban winery hotel in the Americas: Hualta Winery Hotel, from the Curio Collection by Hilton chain.
The story behind the name.
We love sharing this project, not only for how singular the hotel is and the result we reached, but also because we were involved from the very beginning with a fun story around the creation of the name. HUALTA was an idea we had while we were working on the portfolio strategy for the Huentala Wines winery, and we decided to take it as a birthday gift to the founder of the winery and of this hotel. We prepared a card in a very elegant envelope with only this name on it, and the following text:
“Hill, in the milcallac dialect of the Huarpe people.
Hualta represents the characteristic height of Gualtallary and the summit reached by a life full of work and conquests.
The word capable of naming both the longing and the achievement.
AN ICONIC WINE, AN UNMATCHED HOTEL”.
It was love at first sight.
And from there we began working on the development of the image. Inspired by the architecture of Pablo Guerra Arquitectos and the interior design of Luisa Yanzon, we drew on a memorable part of the hotel – a wall made of wine bottles – to create a unique typeface that gave rise to the logotype.
The result of the exploration was a typeface with contemporary, elegant features along with shapes that remind us of the front view of a barrel. The identity is completed with a palette of earthy colors that answer not only to the tones of the hotel but also to the soil where the vineyards are grown that give rise to the wines produced at Hualta, the first urban winery hotel in the Americas.
Another adventure with Mendoza in the leading role.
