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    Case Study - The French Wine Industry

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    Sabeeh -ul -Hassan
    The French wine industry was facing challenges from Australian wines in the UK market in the early 2000s. Australian wines had surpassed French wines in both sales volume and value in the UK. While French wines were still preferred in upscale restaurants, Australian wines were more popular for purchases to drink at home. This was due to factors such as the consistency and branding of Australian wines compared to the complex regional labeling of French wines. However, French winemakers were becoming less insular and starting to adopt international business practices, which some experts believed could help the French wine industry counter the success of Australian wines.

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    Case Study - The French Wine Industry

    Uploaded by

    Sabeeh -ul -Hassan
    317 views1 page
    The French wine industry was facing challenges from Australian wines in the UK market in the early 2000s. Australian wines had surpassed French wines in both sales volume and value in the UK. While French wines were still preferred in upscale restaurants, Australian wines were more popular for purchases to drink at home. This was due to factors such as the consistency and branding of Australian wines compared to the complex regional labeling of French wines. However, French winemakers were becoming less insular and starting to adopt international business practices, which some experts believed could help the French wine industry counter the success of Australian wines.

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    The French wine industry was facing challenges from Australian wines in the UK market in the early 2000s. Australian wines had surpassed French wines in both sales volume and value in the UK. While French wines were still preferred in upscale restaurants, Australian wines were more popular for purchases to drink at home. This was due to factors such as the consistency and branding of Australian wines compared to the complex regional labeling of French wines. However, French winemakers were becoming less insular and starting to adopt international business practices, which some experts believed could help the French wine industry counter the success of Australian wines.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    317 views1 page

    Case Study - The French Wine Industry

    Uploaded by

    Sabeeh -ul -Hassan
    The French wine industry was facing challenges from Australian wines in the UK market in the early 2000s. Australian wines had surpassed French wines in both sales volume and value in the UK. While French wines were still preferred in upscale restaurants, Australian wines were more popular for purchases to drink at home. This was due to factors such as the consistency and branding of Australian wines compared to the complex regional labeling of French wines. However, French winemakers were becoming less insular and starting to adopt international business practices, which some experts believed could help the French wine industry counter the success of Australian wines.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 1

    Case Study

    The French Wine Industry

    By 2001 the traditional dominance of French wines in the UK had ended, with sales
    of Australian wine outstripping them for the first time. By 2000, Australian wines
    accounted for 19.5 per cent of UK wine sales in terms of value (up 25 per cent over
    1999), with French wines showing a steady decline. And for wines over £5.00,
    Australian wine had already overtaken French wines. In the prestigious 2000 wine
    sampling contest in London, the Australians had won awards for three-quarters of the
    wines entered.
    However, many wine experts still regarded Australian wines as inferior to French
    wines. For example, in some top London restaurants such as Le Gavroche, Australian
    wines were not served because they believed that customers preferred the quality of
    French wine over ‘something more than a chemist’s blend’ (FT, 11 February 2001).
    Whilst French wine still tended to be favoured for eating out, Australian wine was
    favoured by take-home drinkers – and 84 per cent of all wine sold in the UK was
    drunk at home.
    The success of Australian wines with retailers was put down to several factors. The
    quality was consistent, compared with French wines that could still differ by year and
    location. Also, whilst the French had always highlighted the importance of the local
    origin of the wine within France, Australia had, in effect, ‘branded’ the country as a
    wine region and then concentrated on the variety of grape – a Shiraz or a Chardonnay,
    for example. This avoided the confusing details of the location of vineyards and the
    names of Chateaux that many customers found difficult about French wines. Terry
    Davies, managing director of Beringer Blass, explained: ‘you can pronounce the name
    on the bottle on our wines’, the inference being that people could not on a bottle of
    French wine.
    Historically the European wine makers had also focused on their home markets. This
    was particularly the case in Italy, but French producers also tended to assume that
    consumers overseas would buy wine in much the same way as in France. This was
    changing, however. French wine makers were becoming less insular. Caroline Gilby,
    a consultant to the industry, explained that one well-known Chablis producer had
    spent time working in Chile, the US and Australia before taking up his present job.
    ‘Wine makers interested in quality will have travelled. That’s quite a change and it
    has started to happen only in the last five years.’ Mike Paul of Destination Wine also
    believed that ‘there are signs that there could be a backlash from the old world as
    France and Italy get their act together’ (FT, 3 March 2001).

    Questions

    1. Analyse the situation for the French wine industry: what are the key issues?
    2. What options are open to the French wine producers?
    3. What advice would you give to the French wine producers in order to counter
    the Australian success?

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