Leeds heritage, reinvented: the branding behind Double Six Drinks' spirits
How Leeds-based drinks brand Double Six Drinks has worked with fellow Leeds business OurCreative. to turn the city's heritage into bold, contemporary branding, one bottle at a time.
Double Six Drinks began in 2020, when two Leeds brothers found themselves with time on their hands and their bars closed for business. What started as a bartender-led lockdown project distilling their own "cracking Yorkshire gin" has grown into a fast-expanding spirits business, with the portfolio now spanning vodka, agave spirits, bottled cocktails and coffee liqueur, and products moving into retail and onto the bars of national hospitality groups.
Behind that growth is a long-term creative partnership with fellow Leeds business OurCreative., who have shaped the identity of the Double Six portfolio, seeing the business through waves of evolution while holding a clear point of view around quality, differentiation and Yorkshire identity, without ever tipping into gimmick.
Wolfe Bros was the gin that started it all. Its name and bold diamond emblem nod to 39 Call Lane, birthplace of Double Six's first micro-distillery and once home to a jeweller of the same name. The redesign also solved a practical problem, replacing eight separate hand-applied labels with one striking identity that went on to win a World Brand Design Society award.
Jody Monteith, Double Six Drinks, says: "OurCreative. have been with us from the beginning. They know the brand as well as we do, which means every new product still feels unmistakably Double Six."
The distillery's most recent launch, Thomas Green, the brand's coffee liqueur, took a similar approach to Wolfe Bros but arrived at a very different look. Named after a famous 1800s Leeds coffee house and made with Double Six’s Bonomi vodka base and a 12-hour cold brew from fellow Leeds business Maude Coffee Roasters, the drink deserved packaging with the same craft behind it. OurCreative. moved it away from the black, orange and gold of typical coffee liqueurs, building a vibrant blue identity centred on a hybrid martini glass and coffee-drip mark, with a conversational, lightly irreverent tone of voice.
Joe Wallis, design director at OurCreative., says: "With every product we've designed for Double Six, heritage is our starting point, but never our limit. We find what's honestly Leeds about it and give it room to look modern. We're not interested in nostalgia for its own sake."
Maude Coffee Roasters, the Leeds roaster behind that cold brew, offers a complementary view from the city's wider drinks scene – another local business building a name for itself for having the same high standards of quality and craft.
The roastery's founder Matthew Van Elkan adds: “We pride ourselves in creating the best quality coffee, ethically sourced from farmers across the world who we can properly stand behind. That shared pride in doing things properly is what made working with Double Six feel like such a natural fit.”
Together, the three businesses make the case for a wider trend across Leeds' drinks scene: heritage as a starting point, not a straitjacket, with branding turning local stories into identities that feel distinctive and travel well beyond the city that made them.
See more of the brands that OurCreative. have worked with, and discover the full Double Six Drinks and Maude Coffee Roasters portfolios on their websites.
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