Accolade Wines - owner of Australian wine brand Hardys - claims to have become the first company to have a footprint in all major New World wine regions with the acquisition of Chilean business Viña Anakena.
Announced today (14 September), the deal includes all Viña Anakena brands and inventory relating to Anakena labels - including Alwa, Ona and Tama - a 3,000-tonne winery, and a vineyard near the winery.
Accolade described Viña Anakena as having an “outstanding reputation as a producer of world class, distinctly Chilean wines” with a presence in 50 markets including the US. It added the deal cemented Accolade’s position as “the leading New World supplier of premium, commercial and value wines”.
“Our customer knowledge and sophisticated distribution systems will build on Anakena’s foundations,” said Accolade chairman Nick Greiner. The business will be hoping to replicate the sort of success it had found with the New Zealand Mud House brand it acquired last year, and which Greiner said had been “quickly built into million-case brand in the UK”.
Accolade Wines will retain the current management team, which includes MD Ricardo Letelier and winemaker Gavin Taylor.
“Accolade has a track record of looking after and growing brands,” said Letelier. “Accolade has demonstrated it not only preserves the unique identity and heritage of its brands but can bring its global expertise to bear to grow brands that it brings into the company.”
Viña Anakena was founded in the late 1990s by two friends, Felipe Ibáñez and Jorge Gutiérrez, in Alto Cachapoal, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains south of Chilean capital Santiago. Their goal was to craft “elegant, innovative and distinctly New World wines” that reflected their origin and Chile´s potential as a producer of world class fine wines.
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