The Storyteller: A Whiskey Experience Rooted in Irish History

Designers Tiago Russo and Katia Martins Craft a Unique Whiskey Vessel

Inspired by the tradition of Irish storytellers, The Storyteller is more than just a collectable item or a visionary design. It represents an authentic piece of Irish history. The designers drew inspiration from the tradition of their director's ancestors, who were known as the country's storytellers. These individuals travelled from town to town, delivering news across the island. The Storyteller is a personal take on a whiskey experience that merges with design to create a moment in history and new, powerful memories around a glass of one of the rarest and most sought-after whiskeys ever produced.

The Storyteller stands out for its unique properties. It is an ultra-rare whiskey that is heavily influenced by a see-through display that fully focuses on the bottle, without further distractions. The design encompasses and merges the details of the bottle and box, creating an interplay of angles that elevate the display and base booklet while keeping all other secrets fully hidden, from the glasses to the pipette, all in their respective secret compartments.

The vessel of The Storyteller is a play of surfaces and geometries. Half of it is fully frosted, and the other half, slightly recessed, is fully clear, revealing the whiskey inside in all its glory. This creates a visual play of slowly revealing the shades of the whiskey and the gold foiled across the bottle while viewing it from any angle. The box, on the other hand, presents a vertical shape, with all the accessories hidden so that the bottle stays the centre of attention.

The bottle's geometry starts from the irregular angular base, making the bottle an enneahedron that can only be placed on top of a surface on its side, allowing for the correct reading of the written information. Hidden in the lower dark leather casing are four push-to-open drawers, each one towards one axis, revealing glasses, coasters, stones, pipette, carafe, and of course, the secret booklet. The box opens exactly like two books together, making it only possible to remove the bottle from the top, held in a metallic tripod that elevates the vessel, slightly tilted upwards, allowing for a better read of the information embedded into the bottle.

The Storyteller was designed and envisioned over a year, with a focus on providing a fully immersive experience between user and bottle. The box was developed to act as a cabinet of curiosities, where history and mythology merge into secret chambers that reveal the whiskey-tasting accessories and the booklet, hiding in plain sight, waiting for the chosen user to unleash its secrets, yet always focusing on the floating bottle as the core of interaction. The design was awarded Platinum in A' Packaging Design Award in 2023, recognizing its world-class, exceptional, and highly innovative design that showcases unmatched professionalism, genius, and contributes to societal wellbeing.