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When delWine recommended 12 wines out of 50 being offered by Hotel Trident Gurgaon by a fabulously low price of Rs. 275++ a glass in it December Wine Month, it included Brand’s Laira “1893” Range Shiraz being imported by Brindco from McWilliams whom they have been representing in India almost from the start of the import business in 2001.
Today, as I head a group of 30 members of the Delhi Wine Club and Indian Wine Academy (FB closed group of over 6000 members) to taste 8 wines at Hotel Trident Gurgaon, I have also included it in the list. Not that it is going to make any difference in the tasting, but as we taste this Shiraz today, the ownership of this brand would have passed on to John Casella, the biggest seller of a single brand Yellow Tail owned by John Casella and imported by the Mumbai-based Berkmann Cellars India.
The Brands Laira business winery is based in the Coonawarra district in south-east South Australia. Last year in November Casella had purchased 99.06% shares of Peter Lehmann in South Australia as a part of the strategy to expand into higher-end wine brands and yet retain the big-selling Yellow Tail commercial wine brand as the core of operations. It had earlier tried to introduce higher end wines within the Yellow Tails label but seemingly did not succeed, if one goes into detailed analysis of the report by Sunday Morning Herald.
Casella, which has regrouped itself under the umbrella of Casella Family Brands, has not indicated the price paid for Brands Laira. But John Casella says he aims to expand the sale of its Coonawarra brand by almost three and a- half times, from the current 70,000 to about 250,000 cases during the next decade.
Although Yellow Tail sells a token few thousand cases in India against its annual sales of 12.5 million cases over 90% of which is exported to the US, Casella claims the overall business of the family is on a good wicket, especially due to a drop in the Australian dollar to below US$ 0.72. "We're travelling very well," Mr Casella reportedly says. More than 90 per cent of Casella's sales are exports, with the Yellow Tail brand generating annual sales of 12.5 million cases.
According to McWilliam's Wines CEO Rob Blackwell the sale followed a strategic review by McWilliam's earlier this year, which found there were too many brands in the portfolio, and too many individual product lines, known in retailing as stock-keeping units (SKUs). McWilliam's is owned by members of the McWilliams family. It produces about 2 million cases of wine annually from its brands which include McWilliam's, Evans & Tate, and Mount Pleasant.
It is too early to ascertain if there would be any changes in the distribution for India but it is unlikely that Casella would change the portfolio of export from Brindco to Berkmann Cellars India. It is a moot point whether Brindco would be able to increase the sales by 3.5 times as targeted by the new owner, although it is well priced.
Accolade Wines, the second largest wine company in Australia, is eyeing a public issue in 2016 as 80 per cent owned CHAMP Private Equity prepares for an exit in a business which has $1 billion in revenues and is led by brands such as Hardys, Mud House, Kumala which are being imported in India by Sula Selections, the report adds.
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