This week’s wine news: Treasury dumps its cheap wines, plus Judgment of Paris’ Steven Spurrier dies and Grocery Outlet sales soar
• So long, cheap wine: The Wine Curmudgeon has long been baffled by Treasury Wine Estates’ business model, which seems to change almost as often I bellyache about overpriced wine. Masstige wines, anyone? The latest Treasury business zag? Australia’s Treasury, which is the sixth biggest U.S. producer through its ownership of Beringer and affiliated labels like Main & Vine and Founders’ Estate, as well as pricier brands like Sterling, Beaulieu, and Chateau St. Jean, will “license” the Beringer Main & Vine and Founders’ Estate wines, plus Coastal Estates and Meridian, to The Wine Group. No, I’m not exactly sure what licensing means, save as a way to dump the labels without the federal anti-trust investigation that would follow a sale. Is this a good idea? Who knows? Treasury has been under tremendous pressure from analysts to do something or other to boost profits, and this strikes me as other. The winner will be The Wine Group, home to Franzia and Cupcake, which picks up some decent-selling supermarket wines to compete with E&J Gallo after Gallo added Constellation Brads’ cheap wines earlier this year.
• Steven Spurrier, 1941-2021: Steven Spurrier, the British wine writer whose 1976 Judgment of Paris transformed the wine world, died last week. He was 79. Spurrier was a writer, educator, and merchant, but was best known for The Judgment. That’s when a group of wines from a little known region called California bested some of France’s greatest wines in a competition using French judges. The result was the beginning of the California wine business as we know it, and Napa, Sonoma, and the rest would look much different today if not for the winning The Judgment. Warren Winiarski, who made the winning cabernet sauvignon at the competition, has always enjoyed sharing the story.
• Grocery Outlet sales: Grocery Outlet, the discount supermarket chain that may be the last best hope for cheap, quality supermarket wine, announced more spectacular numbers last week. Sales for fiscal 2020 jumped almost 25 percent from the same period in 2019, and the company expects to have 400 stores across the U.S. by the end of 2021. Currently, it’s in eight states, most on the west coast. One analyst, after seeing the results, said the chain remains a top long-term growth company.