Story and Photo by Linda Cicoira
Carter Tuttle, a native of Wachapreague, used the existing Cape Charles Brewing Co. logo with the local lighthouse to design the label for the company’s crowler cans, the 32-ounce containers that are filled with tap beer and then sealed on site for customers to take home.
“There are really two things in play,” said Tuttle, who now lives in Del Ray, a small neighborhood in Alexandria, Va., but comes back home to visit family and friends. Tuttle is also the company representative for Southern Graphic Systems at Nestle in Northern Virginia. “I love good beer, and in my professional life, I specialize in printing and packaging for consumer goods,” he said.
Tuttle learned about the Cape Charles brewery in early 2017 “after reading a few online articles announcing the plan to build at the old Reliable Building Supply location on Stone Road.”
Two brothers, Chris, and Mark Marshall, joined forces with their mom, Deborah Marshall, to start the business.
“I initially reached out to Chris asking if I could help design some of their packaging,” Tuttle said. “At the time, packaging was not a top priority, but once the brewery found out one of their beers would be featured on the Discovery Channel show ‘“Killing Fields,”’ we kicked things into high gear and started to work on various label designs.”
Tuttle and Chris Marshall “have a lot of mutual friends, but we had not met prior to working together.”
Tuttle has brewed his own beer. “My father (Joe Tuttle) got me interested in brewing after I tried some of his home-brewed ginger beer,” Tuttle said. “Cape Charles Brewing’s operation is really impressive. Despite being relatively new to the brewing scene, they brew a strong variety of styles. I have yet to spend a day brewing with the team there, so I can’t really comment on technique. That said, after sampling a few flights of their beer, I couldn’t find one I didn’t like.”
“There were a lot of good beers to choose from,” Tuttle said. “If I had to pick a favorite it would be their Weizenbock. It’s a really cool mashup of a traditional wheat Weizen ale and a malty sweet bock style beer.”
