The new look for the French wine brand Piat d'Or has been unveiled by Percy Fox. The Guinness UDV subsidiary has spent £250,000 on a plan to revitalise the brand which once led the market. The brand has looked the same since it was launched in 1979 but the wine market has moved on and the new image is designed to compete with the flood of New World products which dominate it. The wine business has transformed in the last decade. In 1990 Piat was the number one brand and Gallo was the only New World wine in the top 10. By 2000 Piat had dropped to 11th place and every wine ahead of it was either Australian or Californian. In the last 10 years wine sales have gone from 56m cases to 100m. But the brand still has 3.7 million consumers. Percy Fox marketing manager Mark Fells said extensive blind tests showed people still liked the wine, although they did not buy it very much. "We needed to see if there was something about Piat that would make consumers buy it. There is also a group of consumers who know nothing about the wine and weren't born when it was launched. "Now the package is bang up to date although the shape of the bottle stays the same. "The Le' has been dropped from the name because it was too close to the old baggage." The wine is also more modern, fruitier and higher in alcohol. The new Piat d'Or range will be officially launched to the trade at the London International Wine and Spirit Fair in May and the bottles should go on the shelves by July. Fells has a £500,000 budget to support the launch. This will fund sales promotions, tastings, advertising and PR. Falling fortunes of Piat 1990 1 Piat 2 Stowells Box 3 Lutomer Laski Rizling 4 Gallo 5 Piemontello 6 Sansovino 7 Blue Nun 8 Black Tower 9 Mateus 10 Don Cortez 2000 1 Jacob's Creek 2 Gallo 3 Hardy's Stamp 4 Stowells Total 5 Lindemans 6 Banrock Station 7 Blossom Hill 8 Nottage Hill 9 Rosemont 10 Penfolds 11 Piat Source: ACNielsen annual volume {{DRINKS }}

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