Big Wine Companies

Southcorp Wines



Not only is it Australia’s largest wine company, but Southcorp Wines today claims to be the seventh largest in the world. With sales of A$660 million last year, A$313 of which were exports, and producing around 30 by value of all Australian wine, it now contributes 42 of its parent’s EBIT, outperforming its two stablemates of Southcorp Packaging and Southcorp appliances. Spectacular international growth of its key brands of Lindemans and Penfolds has been responsible for its 20 compound annual growth in EBIT over the last six years.

It took, however, an eminent English wine writer to first voice the opinion that Australia is the only nation whose largest company is genuinely attempting to make its best wine. Wines like Penfolds Grange and Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and Michael Shiraz, Leo Buring Leonay Riesling, Seppelt Salinger, Coldstream Hills Reserve Pinot Noir and Reserve Chardonnay, the Devil’s Lair cabernet blend, plus the in-demand new white kid on the block, Penfolds Yattarna, each reflect Southcorp’s undoubted commitment to quality.

At the opposite end of the pricing scale, Southcorp’s set of cards also includes such prominent brands as Queen Adelaide Chardonnay, Lindemans Bin 65 Chardonnay, Queen Adelaide Regency Red, Penfolds Koonunga Hill and Penfolds Rawson’s Retreat. With so many brands at its disposal, Southcorp has virtually filled in the entire map of possible combinations of region, variety and price point.

Style, assets and regional focus.

Today it’s almost impossible not to notice the swagger in Southcorp’s step. In addition to the country’s dominant range of red wines under the Penfolds brand, it owns in Leo Buring Australia’s most prestigious traditional maker of dry riesling wines and Coonawarra’s most historic and one of its best performed makers of reds in the Wynns Coonawarra Estate. In Seppelt it owns Australia’s most substantial and seasoned maker of sparkling wines, in Devil’s Lair a leading maker of Margaret River cabernet and chardonnay, while in the ever-expanding Coldstream Hills operation, initially established by James Halliday, one of the Yarra’s most important labels. At Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley it owns a unique resource of fortified wines, principally port and sherry.

Its 6,000 ha under vine in 25 different vineyards makes Southcorp Australia’s dominant owner of vineyards and quite possibly the world’s largest. Three-quarters of these assets are in South Australia, where the company is handsomely the largest owner of terra rossa soils in Coonawarra and boasts substantial plantings of mature vines in the Barossa Valley. It is also a major owner of vineyards at Clare, Padthaway, McLaren Vale and Eden Valley, also in the Riverlands on the Murray River and near Robe in the state’s southeast.

Southcorp also owns significant vineyards in the Hunter Valley and Barooga in NSW, at the Yarra Valley, Elmhurst and the Murray Basin in Victoria, plus the Devil’s Lair plantings at Margaret River in Western Australia.

Its principal wineries are at Nuriootpa and Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley, plus Karodoc near Mildura and Great Western in Victoria, its specialist sparkling facility. It owns other wineries at Coonawarra, the Riverlands, the Hunter Valley, Yenda Griffith, Margaret River and the Yarra Valley. In 1999 these wineries crushed a total of 224,000 tonnes.

Outside Australia Southcorp produces the La Perouse brand in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France and with its purchase in 1999 of the Cuppa Cup vineyards and Domaine Lamotte winery in the same region inherited the James Herrick brand. It produces the Seven Peaks wines in partnership with Paragon Vineyards in the Edna Valley of the US, and in 1997 it purchased a site for a new 160 ha vineyard development near Paso Robles on the Californian Central Coast.

History

Thumb through the annals of Australian wine history and the word ‘Southcorp’ only appears in recent times, yet its key brands and their histories are set firmly in the very best traditions of the country’s winemaking. Today Southcorp’s image is largely structured around its principal labels of Penfolds, Seppelt, Wynns and Lindemans, each of which until relatively recently were very significant and substantial individual enterprises and themselves owners of major national labels.

It was only in 1994 that The Penfolds Wine Group changed its name to Southcorp Wines, after its parent company changed its name in 1993 from SA Brewing Holdings to Southcorp Holdings. In 1990 SA Brewing, which at that time owned Seppelt, Queen Adelaide and Hungerford Hill, purchased Penfolds, which brought with it the brands of Kaiser Stuhl, Wynns Coonawarra Estate, Seaview, Killawarra, Tulloch, Tollana, Lindemans, Leo Buring, Rouge Homme and Matthew Lang.

Strengths and weaknesses.

It’s an extraordinary achievement that despite its enormous number of distinctive brands, Southcorp has successfully managed to maintain the integrity and identity of each. Its relatively small number of wineries must be cris-crossed with Chinese walls. Where Southcorp owns several distinct brands in a single region, Coonawarra for instance, there’s little doubt that it has steadfastly retained the individual stamp and style of each. You could hardly confuse a Coonawarra shiraz or cabernet made under either of the Lindemans, Wynns or Penfolds labels with those of the others.

Yet it’s quite possible in retaining such a strong brand image, all the way from winemaking to packaging, that its best possible wines are somehow eluding Southcorp’s grasp. The type of seasonal fluctuation experienced by wines from small single vineyards has little place in the Southcorp scheme of things. With the exception of a small number of Seppelt wines, plus a few premier Lindemans Coonawarra and Penfolds Clare Estate and Magill labels, Southcorp tends to shun the single vineyard concept.

On the other hand, the remarkable consistency in quality, style and character of Southcorp wines has unquestionably contributed hugely to their success in Australian and international markets. The fact that Penfolds Bin 389 always tastes like Penfolds Bin 389, virtually irrespective of season, is greatly to be admired. That its demand far outstrips supply is ample confirmation. So whether or not it’s the best possible use of the fruit in question simply becomes academic.

Either way, there’s little doubt that the huge spread of vineyard either owned by or contracted to Southcorp over the Australian continent, found in most of the country’s quality wine regions, gives it unparalleled access to fruit diversity and as secure an insurance against poor vintages that humankind could possibly concoct.

Key wines – expensive and cheap.

With the exception of the excellent chardonnays regularly made at Devil’s Lair and Coldstream Hills and the famous Leo Buring rieslings, Southcorp’s best wines largely remain red. However the so-called ‘White Grange’ project, which culminated in the release of the Yattarna after just four years of experimentation, has indeed substantially closed the gap between Southcorp and other leading makers of wood-matured white wines in Australia.

Despite the accolades accorded to Yattarna and its spin-offs by the company and its sponsors, it is naturally far too early to claim that these wines can compete against makers like Leeuwin Estate, Giaconda, Bannockburn and others whose track records of making premium white wines are substantially longer. It would be a matter of serious doubt as to whether or not a less substantial company than Southcorp could have conjured up the hysteria witnessed before and after the first appearance of Yattarna.

Where red is concerned there’s no doubt whatsoever about the deservedly high status of the Penfolds range, atop of which sits the celebrated Grange itself. Penfolds prides itself on having resisted fluctuations in the wine fashion stakes and claims that its family of red wines, most of which are given characteristic bin numbers, continue to resist oenological movements in skirt height and tie width. While the wines are clearly more polished and better balanced while young today than ever before, this remains largely true, even if segments of the industry regularly anticipate their reworking. Even if they might reflect an outmoded style, they continue to sell out more quickly than ever before. And rightly so.

At the other end of the scale, Southcorp has introduced a series of new brands with more contemporary looks and lighter tastes like Soho and Thirsty Fish. Their immediate success amongst the younger wine set represents a worthy effort to provide a fashionable entry point for new wine drinkers in a young adult market today crowded by pre-mixed spirit brands and newfangled alco-pops.

Southcorp’s collection of key Coonawarra labels is headed by the redoutable Wynns brand, whose black label Cabernet Sauvignon and its familiar label perpetuate a rich tradition of longevity and value. Beefed up in the winery to an extent not witnessed in the vast majority of other Coonawarra reds, the prestige Wynns labels of John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and Michael Shiraz continue to pose questions about balance and faithfulness to regional identity, but the Shiraz and Riesling continually represent fine value to buyers. Rouge Homme’s reds occasionally flirt closely with more herbaceous expressions of sweet berry Coonawarra fruit, while the Lindemans collection of premier Coonawarra reds pack together sweet fruit and toasty oak.

A traditional base for the Lindemans, Penfolds and Tulloch brands, the Hunter Valley is represented in the Southcorp portfolio by a steadily improving collection under the Lindemans brand, plus the idiosyncratic Tulloch range, whose best wine by far is its Hector Shiraz. Southcorp’s McLaren Vale label has just undergone a revamp and renaming to Edwards & Chaffey, while the Tollana label is carried by a very affordable range of fine Eden Valley table wines.

When, in 1990, SA Brewing combined Seppelt, Penfolds, Killawarra and Seaview under the same roof, it constituted such a marriage of commercially-priced sparkling wine production that it was some surprise that it failed to attract the attention of the regulators of free competition in the marketplace. These brands continue to dominate the cheaper sparkling sector in Australia, while Seppelt’s Great Western winery continues to release excellent premium quality sparkling wines under the Salinger label. There’s little doubt, however, that Seppelt has ceded its traditional place as the maker of Australia’s best sparkling wines to Domaine Chandon and other recent arrivals into the sparkling market such as Yarrabank and Pirie.

Its relatively recent purchases of Devil’s Lair at Margaret River and Coldstream Hills in the Yarra Valley fill some important niches for Southcorp, which has traditionally been under-represented on restaurant lists. These cooler climate vineyards represent the cutting edge for Southcorp’s winemakers, since they’re established in relatively youthful wine regions where experimentation with variety, clone and wine expression is still actively encouraged.

Meanwhile, there’s little doubt that the Penfolds’ reds, headed by Grange and Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon, remain the cornerstones of the Southcorp stable. They still set the standards for all serious makers of Australian red wine who, love them or hate them, can never ignore them.

Future plans and ambitions.

Even before its current programme to double its red wine processing ability, Southcorp claimed to be the largest maker of premium red wine on Planet Earth. Announced in late 1997, the $A405 million investment over five years involves $A145 million directly on vineyard and winery expansion, the most significant investment ever in Australian wine history, with another $45-50 million earmarked just for enough oak cooperage to store and mature the increased production.

Southcorp is certainly not the only leading Australian wine company unable to meet its latent demand within Australia for premium red wine and with overall increases in sales to North America and Europe up by 17 and 12 in the 1999 financial year, every red brand in its portfolio is presently in short supply.

While nobody at Southcorp could expect to double the quantity of its premier labels within a mere five years, much of its investment in vineyards has taken place in the Limestone Coast region adjacent to Coonawarra and Padthaway in the southeast corner of South Australia, where red soils and consistently cool ripening seasons should produce excellent red wine.

Orlando Wyndham



A fully owned subsidiary of Groupe Pernod Ricard, Orlando Wyndham is one of Australia’s giant wine companies. Its greatest asset is Jacob’s Creek, Australia’s principal export brand, which in 1999 achieved sales of more than 3.5 million dozen. In fact Jacob’s Creek today accounts for more than one in five of all Australian table wine exports. It is the single largest selling Australian bottled wine in the UK, Ireland, Norway, Japan, Singapore and New Zealand.

Style, assets and regional focus.

Orlando Wyndham’s approach towards growth contrasts dramatically with that of Mildara Blass, Southcorp and BRL Hardy. Its best-known wines tend to be its less expensive. Furthermore, it is focused more strongly on the organic growth of its existing brands than the acquisition of other brands or the establishment of new labels. Its relatively small number of brands and their scale reflects a distinctive and long-term philosophy, encouraged, no doubt, by its French parent.

With current vineyard holdings around 1940 ha, Orlando Wyndham has been later to react to the trends towards vineyard ownership than its three large competitors in Australia. The company also produces very few flagship wines, has no prestige chardonnay other than the bizzarely named Jacob’s Creek ‘Limited Release’ label and no upmarket sparkling label.

Orlando Wyndham’s main production facility is the sprawling winery at its original birthplace, Rowland Flat, in the Barossa Valley. Today this winery serves as the company’s centre of white wine and sparkling wine production and the focus of its final blending and packaging. The miracle that is the quality and consistency of Jacob’s Creek, despite its substantial volumes, takes place at Rowland Flat. The company’s second Barossa winery is now known as Richmond Grove and was initially constructed as Chateau Leonay for Leo Buring. Substantial recent investment has seen it converted into a large but specialist red wine cellar whose quirk remains the very fine rieslings still made there under the watchful guidance of legendary maker John Vickery.

The group’s wineries at Mudgee in NSW have been substantially redeveloped, with the former Montrose facility being substanitally refurbished as ‘Orlando Wyndham Mudgee’, while the historic but relatively small Craiglee winery has become the cellar door of the revamped Poet’s Corner brand. Wyndham Estate remains the company’s base in the Hunter Valley, while its other major NSW winery is that of Wickham Hill in the Riverlands. The enduring exception to the company’s collection of large production facilities is the historic and largely untouched Morris winery in Rutherglen, NE Victoria, where David Morris has been wisely left to practice his trade in much the same way that his family did before him.

Orlando’s owned vineyards are almost exclusively found in South Australia, with the majority south of Adelaide at Langhorne Creek, Padthaway and Coonawarra. Like most other large owners of vineyard land at Padthaway it has reworked its plantings there, successfully converting them from bag-in-the-box standard to a level consistent with its Saints range. With only 200 ha evenly divided between the Barossa floor and the Eden Valley, home of the St Helga Riesling, Orlando is not a substantial land owner at its winemaking headquarters. Its other main vineyards are the Morris property at Rutherglen, the Wyndham vineyards in the Hunter and the recently expanded Montrose and Craiglee vineyards in Mudgee.

Two of Orlando Wyndham’s most important vineyards produce two of its rare individual vineyard wines, and two of its most worthwhile and expensive. The oldest of these vineyards is the famous Steingarten site, which in 1962 was gouged out with machines and explosives from a slope of decomposed schist rock in the hills high above Rowland Flat. Its vines were close-planted in classic Mosel fashion and its fragrant, steely wine can be exemplary.

Initially planted in 1968 for decorative purposes, the Lawson’s vineyard at Padthaway is a mere 2.8 ha of stressed shiraz vines planted onto deep sandy soils. Incredibly enough, they still crop at what would initially appear to be an alarmingly high level of at least two tonnes per ha, but their wine is evolving into a deeply flavoured Australian classic of depth and longevity.

History

Orlando Wyndham dates back to the small vineyard planted at Jacob’s Creek in 1847 by Johann Gramp, a Bavarian immigrant who sent to Germany for the cuttings. The first vintage from this, the Barossa Valley’s first vineyard, was 1850, producing 180 litres of wine. From these beginnings the company became G. Gramp and Sons Ltd in 1912, introducing the Orlando trade mark that year. Growth was strong and steady until the depression of 1930s, but fortunately the Gramp family managed to survive.

It was after the Second World War that the innovations which cemented Orlando’s reputation and prosperity were introduced. In the early 1950s then managing director Colin Gramp became aware of the techniques of using pressure tanks for fermentation then being used in Germany, which gave the winemaker total control over the escape of carbon dioxide. Gas pressure is increased if it is retained, thereby slowing the rate of fermentation, resulting in livelier, fresher and more aromatic white wines.

Gramp’s equipment arrived in 1952 and made its debut in the 1953 vintage, creating a remarkable wine which revolutionised white wine making in Australia, and initiating the now famous series of Orlando Special Vintage Barossa Riesling.

Orlando’s second success story of the 1950s was Barossa Pearl, Australia’s first naturally sweetened and effervescent wine which was released in late 1956. It was as affordable as it was approachable, and although it viewed in a rather different light today, introduced multitudes of Australians to wine.

In late 1970 the Gramp family sold out to Reckitt and Coleman, which had also purchased Morris Wines in Rutherglen and the Wickham Hill winery at Griffith in same year. Eighteen years later, lacking the drive to maintain their only global wine interest, the directors of Reckitt and Coleman sold Orlando to a group of its directors, including Perry Gunner, Steven Couche, Robin Day and Chris Roberts. Given the massive capital requirements of running such a large company, the Orlando management then began looking for a buyer, which is where Pernod Ricard entered the story, finally settling on majority ownership in May 1989.

By January 1990 Pernod Ricard added the publicly listed Wyndham Group to its stable and Orlando Wyndham was established.

Wyndham Estate dates back to 1830s when Hunter Valley pioneer George Wyndham founded the Dalwood vineyard which, after a period of ownership by Penfolds, was sold to Perc McGuigan, its cellar-master, in the early 1960s. The McGuigans united the entire original estate in 1971 when they bought the adjoining ‘house’ block, which heralded a period of rapid and aggressive expansion in the 1970s, including a joint venture with Richmond Grove. By the time that Pernod Ricard bought the company it owned a number of successful brands and wineries, including Richmond Grove, Morris, Montrose and Craigmoor.

Strengths and weaknesses.

While it may lack a large group of prestige brands against which its lesser wines can be sold, the very export-orientated Orlando Wyndham offers exceptional consistency and value in most of its labels, especially those of Orlando, Richmond Grove, Craigmoor and Montrose. It’s a testament to the quality of its marketing that in many countries where Jacob’s Creek sells very successfully, it is actually believed to be Australia’s premier wine by many of its consumers!

The company is strongly entrenched in the UK, the USA and in several Asian and European markets and has clearly benefited from the sales and distribution strength of its parent, Pernod Ricard.

While the up-market Centenary Hill Shiraz and Gramp’s range are beginning to address the issue, it’s a valid criticism of Orlando Wyndham that it has largely ignored its Barossa heritage and has only recently reintroduced a relatively small number of exclusively Barossa wines. Similarly, although it is being addressed with some excellent ‘Show Reserve’ wines to be marketed under the Wyndham Estate label and an overall improvement in quality, the company’s folio hasn’t exactly been a strong advertisement for the virtues of Hunter Valley wine.

Key wines – expensive and cheap.

Synonymous with Orlando Wyndham, the Jacob’s Creek label was introduced in 1976 with a 1973 blend of shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and malbec sourced from Padthaway, Coonawarra and McLaren Vale. While its varietal nature and regional sourcing have chopped and changed with time, its quality has remained consistent and its value unquestioned, especially with the red blend and the Riesling. It’s often a source of wonder how such a massive production run can maintain such standards, but it does.

The excellent ‘Saints’ range of Orlando wines was introduced in 1983 with the first-rate 1980 St Hugo Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon. It has been joined by the St Helga Riesling and St Hilary Chardonnay, and was for a while accompanied by a rather dubious St Hewitt Pinot Noir. Again made in surprisingly large volumes, these wines have always offered fine varietal expression and value, with some truly exceptional releases under the St Hugo and St Helga labels. For a period Orlando’s winemakers championed the cause of enzymic enhancement of riesling flavours, creating several controversial wines under their various labels. While they tended to mature very slowly they offered great intensity of flavour and on occasions even fooled their detractors into awarding them major prizes at wine shows.

Now they’re becoming fashionable in Australia, the Mudgee label of Montrose has been granted freedom to make genuinely true-to-style expressions from its mature vineyard of red Italian varieties, creating some excellent wines in the process. While they may attract some drinkers to the company’s collection of Mudgee wines, Orlando Wyndham stands to benefit massively from the renewed interest in this region and the exceptional value and flavour of its shiraz, cabernet and chardonnay.

Originally developed as an Upper Hunter Valley label by the entrepreneurial Mark Cashmore, Richmond Grove has relocated to the Barossa Valley, becoming a national brand in the process, even encompassing a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Its Barossa and Watervale rieslings, made in the traditional John Vickery style, are exceptional.

Future plans and ambitions.

Orlando Wyndham’s style reflects the long-term European approach of its parent, but that’s not to suggest it isn’t moving quickly. With ambitions to export more than five million cases around the world each year by 2003, largely as Jacob’s Creek and Wyndham Estate, it’s a dynamic business which is seeking to build on its existing strengths, rather than expand through acquisition. With Jacob’s Creek flowing like an Amazonian tributary in full flood, it doesn’t have to.

BRL Hardy Limited



BRL Hardy is the largest of Australia’s wine companies remaining as a single publicly traded entity. For years it seemed it appeared to grow despite an apparent lack of strong brands, but recent work across all levels of quality and pricing has developed a fine smorgasbord from Houghton to Nottage Hill to the Leasingham Bin wines and to its now established classics like Eileen Hardy Shiraz and Tintara reds. Add to that an emergent class of fine sparkling wines under the Arras label to sit atop the already excellent value Sir James brand plus the popular Omni, and the BRL folio looks solid and strong.

It wasn’t always that way. Ten years ago, if ever there was a major wine company in serious need of re-inventing itself, BRL Hardy was it. A wayward decade of anonymous multi-regional blends in the 1980s has been succeeded by a renewed focus on its historic regional strengths, especially in McLaren Vale and Western Australia, and more recently in Clare, Padthaway and Coonawarra. Peter Dawson’s winemaking team, which today includes two of the country’s most gifted winemakers in Steven Pannell and Ed Carr, has since created a collection of red wines second only to that of Penfolds amongst the major Australian wine companies.

Little wonder that BRL’s sales have increased from A$238.3 million in 1993 to A$463.6 million in 1998, with exports now representing around 40 of revenue. The company’s major export markets are today the UK, Canada, the USA, Japan and New Zealand, firmly based around strong sales of the Nottage Hill, Stamps, Banrock Station and some early promise shown by the Stonehaven label from Padthaway.

The company’s crush has skyrocketed to a record 220,000 tonnes in 1999, a massive increase from its 163,500 tonnes in 1998.

Style, assets and regional focus.

The traditional Hardy vineyard base in McLaren Vale remains the focal point of its resurgent range of excellent red wines, headed by the new Reynell reds and the hugely successful Tintara duo of Shiraz and Grenache. It’s also largely responsible for the flagship Eileen Hardy Shiraz, which also contains a strong Padthaway component. Although BRL wineries are equipped with all the latest gadgetry, it takes a traditional approach, using open fermenters for all the best parcels of fruit. It’s a huge job to process around 6,500 tonnes of fruit at its Tintara winery, 2,000 of which are put through open fermenters, are then all hand pressed in the old basket presses, which are then hand-shovelled. You can’t doubt BRL’s commitment to its reds.

Outside McLaren Vale BRL Hardy owns two major wineries in the Riverlands, plus others at Clare in South Australia, Buronga in NSW. It also owns the Houghton winery in the Swan Valley, WA, the traditional home of its White Burgundy, a wine revered in Australia for quality, longevity and value despite its questionable nomenclature in these days of the global wine village.

With its contemporary Stonehaven development BRL Hardy has also constructed the first major winery in the substantial Padthaway region in South Australia’s southeast. This $18 million facility has a 10,000 tonne capacity and was built in time for the 1998 vintage. Its pending 4,000 tonne winery at the capital of Australia, Canberra, marks BRL as the first of the large wine makers to formalise an association with the emerging quality Canberra wine region. It also owns and operates the small Yarra Burn winery in Victoria’s Yarra Valley and has a 50 stake in the Brookland Valley winery and vineyard in Margaret River and in Barossa Valley Estate, South Australia.

BRL Hardy’s major vineyard assets are reflected in the location of its wineries, although it also has substantial plantings in Coonawarra, Wrattonbully, Langhorne Creek in South Australia, at Frankland River, Mount Barker, Pemberton and Gingin in Western Australia and other extensive plantings at Lake Cullulleraine at Sunraysia and Hoddle’s Creek in the Yarra Valley, Victoria. Owner of 1915 ha of vineyard, it is a joint venture partner in 380 ha and leases another 120 ha, completing its a total area under vine of 2415 ha.

The company also owns half a joint venture interest in a new Chilean wine brand, Mapocho, whose wines are made by Central Valley producer Jose Canepa and distributed internationally through the BRL Hardy network. BRL Hardy’s overseas interests also include the majority ownership of the Domaine de la Baume winery in France, the D’instinto joint venture brand in Europe, a joint venture in New Zealand with Nobilo and National Liquor Distributors Limited and operating subsidiaries in Europe, USA and Canada.

History

It’s something of an historical quirk that the first job in Australia of Hardy’s founder, Thomas Hardy, was working as a labourer for John Reynell of Reynella farm. An English immigrant to Australia, he then went to goldfields and worked as a drover before returning to Adelaide in 1853 to purchase the Bankside property on the River Torrens, making his first wine in 1857. He bought the Tintara winery in 1876 and by 1895 Hardy’s had become Australia’s largest wine producer.

Hardy’s purchase of the Emu Wine Company, which owned a winery at Morphett Vale, also delivered one of its greatest long-term assets, the Houghton brand in WA. With the wheel turning full circle, Thomas Hardy & Sons Ltd bought Walter Reynell & Sons Limited in 1982, shortly thereafter moving its base to the superbly restored and refurbished Reynella complex. Ten years later it was struggling and itself bought by Berri-Renmano in 1992, creating the entity BRL Hardy Ltd.

Strengths and weaknesses.

Despite its brilliant recent performance as a wine maker and as an investment to its shareholder, it’s difficult to escape the feeling that the wolves are circling the BRL Hardy camp. The longer it performs well as a business the longer its owners will resist takeover, but there’s little doubt that this pressure lends a certain urgency and focus to all those employed by BRL Hardy.

Despite the large proportion of cask wine in its total output, BRL’s renewed confidence and performance has been driven by wine quality, reflecting the extent to which its management has been prepared to let its viticulturists and winemakers set and achieve high standards across its entire bottled range. The extent to which the company has backed its key technical personnel in this way sets it apart from each of the other three large Australian producers.

Key wines – expensive and cheap.

Its new upper crust of top end reds doesn’t only include those bottled under the Reynell, Tintara and Eileen Hardy labels, but the excellent Leasingham Classic Clare duo of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz and the Thomas Hardy Cabernet Sauvignon, made entirely from Coonawarra fruit. Add to these the occasional first-rate Yarra Burn Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, plus the new Houghton flagship Jack Mann Red and BRL’s new-found strength in red wine looks rather formidable. It is a matter of how much the wheel has turned in this group that its premier collection of white wines, which are effectively the Eileen Hardy Chardonnay and Leasingham Classic Clare Riesling looks just a fraction thin by comparison.

Yet BRL’s mid-market white table wines offer notorious value and consistency. Wines like Hardy’s Siegersdorf Riesling and Houghton White Burgundy were both national icons in their day, but remain as fine and flavoursome as ever they were. Also in the Houghton branch of the stable are the clean and refreshing Moondah Brook whites and the sumptuous and classically proportioned Crofters red wines which, with the Leasingham Bin series red wines, surely represent some of the best value for money under $20 in Australian wine.

At the cheaper end of the market, the reliable Nottage Hill brand has been joined by a recent arrival, the Banrock Station brand. Incorporated into the marketing and image of these wines is a commitment towards wetland environmental projects around the world, which has already resulted in several generous donations and deserved publicity.

Future plans and ambitions.

As indicated earlier, BRL Hardy has the quality wines and resources which would complement those of another large Australian winemaker, with the possible exception of Orlando Wyndham, which really wanted to take a truly dominant position in the Please login to post comment