Innholdsfortegnelse for September 1-15, 2017 i Shanken's Impact Newsletter

IMPACT’S “HOT PROSPECTS” ARE AN eclectic mix of vibrant wine and spirits brands, but one common thread among the 90 winners is that they show huge promise in a crowded and competitive market. A number of these brands are new to the field, making a splash in a short period of time, while others have been on the market for years but have recently gained significant traction. All 90 brands have met the stringent cri-teria necessary for Hot Prospect recognition. For spirits, honorees must have had deple-tions of 50,000-200,000 cases in 2016, either as new products or existing brands that achieved at least 15% growth over the previous year while also enjoying growth in 2014 and 2015. For both domestic and im-ported wine, Hot Prospect brands must have had depletions…

NAPA VALLEY–BASED MERLOT SPE- cialist Duckhorn Wine Company has purchased Calera, one of the Central Coast’s best-known Pinot Noir pro-ducers, from founder Josh Jensen. The deal includes the winery, its tasting room and 85 acres of estate vineyards planted in the Mount Harlan appella-tion. The sale price was not disclosed. As part of the deal Jensen will join Duckhorn’s board of directors and will consult for Calera for the next four years. The winery’s current staff, in-cluding winemaker Mike Waller, will remain onboard. Duckhorn’s principals say they weren’t looking to buy a winery. But president and CEO Alex Ryan says the opportunity to acquire Calera was too good to pass up, noting that the iconic winery will give the company a strong presence in the Central Coast. Known for its…

E.&J. GALLO HAS BOLSTERED ITS brandy portfolio with the purchase of the upscale Germain-Robin brand for an undisclosed sum. The transaction includes Germain-Robin’s inventory of aged brandies. The deal gives Gallo a high-end craft brandy to complement its E.&J. Brandy label. Germain-Robin, including Craft Method (VSOP), XO and a variety of specialty offerings, retails at $48 and up and produces about 6,000 cases annually. E.&J. Brandy retails at around $12 and up and sold nearly 3.9 million cases last year, including its flavored expressions. Hubert Germain-Robin and Ansley Coale founded Germain-Robin in 1982. Over the years the company helped to establish the growing market for high-end American brandies, along with more recent entrants like Copper & Kings and Leopold Bros.…

AS PART OF ITS CONTINUING EFFORTS TO SUPPORT THE NEXT GENERATION OF great American winemakers, the Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation will do-nate $1 million to Washington State University’s Viticulture & Enology Program. Half of the $1 million donation will support the completion of the Life Science Teaching Laboratory at the Ste. Michelle Wine Estates WSU Wine Science Cen-ter, a state-of-the-art facility on the WSU Tri-Cities campus in Richland, Wash. The remainder will fund viticulture and enology student scholarships—$100,000 every year for five years. The atrium of the Wine Science Center will be named the Wine Spectator Atrium. “Washington State University has demonstrated a leadership position in wine education in the United States, and we are therefore proud to recognize your university’s high achievement with our commitment,” said Marvin R. Shanken,…

STE. MICHELLE WINE ES-tates (SMWE) has ap-pointed David Prescott as vice president, retail chain sales, reporting directly to executive vice president, sales Dan Heller. Heller says SMWE’s chain busi-ness now numbers nearly 5 million cases a year. Prescott replaces John Lankas, who has been named vice president of Ste. Michelle’s Midwest re-gion, reporting to senior vice president, national sales manager Raul Perez. Both appointments are ef-fective September 1. • C. Mondavi & Family has appointed David Brown as senior vice president of sales, effective immedi-ately. Brown, who previ-ously held executive sales roles with Procter & Gam-ble, Johnson & Johnson and Treasury Wine Estates, joins the company from Pasternak Wine Imports (part of Taub Family Cos.), where he was chief sales officer. Concurrently, Mark Koppen has been named C. Mondavi’s vice…

MIDWAY THROUGH THE YEAR, IM- pact’s 2016 spirits “Hot Brands” appear to be maintaining their strong momen-tum, with nearly all of them showing solid progress in control states through the first six months of 2017. While the control state spirits market was up 3% in the first half, the Hot Brand roster combined for a 14% jump, with 16 of last year’s 27 award winners rising at double-digit rates. Control states ac-count for about 25% of total U.S. spir-its volume. Growth continues to be strong for Hot Brand whiskies Crown Royal, Jim Beam and Jameson. Including flavored offerings, Crown Royal leapt 12% by volume in control states over the first half of the year, while Jim Beam was up 15% and Jameson rose by 16%. Bulleit (+15%), Woodford Reserve (+17%)…

SONOMA-BASED V2 WINE GROUP HAS added Washington state’s Mercer Wine Estates to its portfolio. V2 will manage the winery’s sales and marketing and distribution network throughout the U.S. and Canada. Based in Prosser, Washington, Mercer Wine Estates’ holdings comprise 3,000 acres of vine-yards focused within the Horse Heaven Hills appellation. The Mercer portfolio includes the Mercer Canyons ($13-$18), Mercer Estates ($15-$32), Mercer Estates Reserve ($32-$42) and Eagle & Plow ($100) labels. Delicato Family Vineyards took a “significant stake” in V2 earlier this year.…

DENNIS MARTIN, WHOSE CAREER AT CALIFORNIA’S FETZER VINEYARDS SPANNED 30 years, died Aug. 13 after battling prostate cancer. He was 69. Martin’s career at Fetzer began in 1985 when then-winemaker Paul Dolan hired him as his assistant. When the Fetzer family sold the business to Brown-Forman in 1992, Martin became director of winemaking, remaining onboard when Chile’s Viña Concha y Toro acquired Fetzer in 2011. He also launched his own small label, called Sanctuary. He retired as Fetzer vice president of winemaking in 2015.…

GIVEN THE UBIQUITY OF THE NOTION THAT CRAFT spirits are aggressively eating into the share of the spirits industry’s blockbuster brands, it may come as a surprise that the world’s top 10 spirits companies have continually upped their share of the global market over the past three years, and now control more than half of total volume worldwide. But a closer look reveals that the drinks business’s major players are not only fending off challenges from craft spirits producers, but in-creasingly joining them at their own game. Indeed, leading market-ers like Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Beam Suntory, Bacardi, Brown- Forman and others are adapting to the craft boom with both organic innovation and acquisition activity. In the past year alone, Pernod has snapped up Smooth Ambler whiskey and Del Maguey mezcal,…

DIAGEO HAS COMPLETED ITS ACQUISITION OF SUPER-PREMIUM TEQUILA BRAND Casamigos. The deal, which was announced on June 21, includes an initial pay-ment of $700 million, and a further $300 million in performance-based payouts over the next decade. Casamigos founders Rande Gerber, George Clooney and Mike Meldman, as well as Casamigos Spirits CEO Lee Einsidler, are remaining onboard, with the brand set to operate as a separate unit. Launched in 2013, Casamigos offers Blanco, Reposado and Añejo expressions ($45-$55 a 750-ml.) and has posted average annual compound growth of 54% over the past two years. For 2017, it’s on track to hit 175,000-200,000 cases, with Diageo setting a five-year goal of growing Casamigos to 1 million cases.…

LAST MONTH, JAPAN’S SAPPORO Holdings Ltd. acquired San Francisco-based Anchor Brewing Company in an $85 million transaction. The deal leaves Anchor’s spirits side, Anchor Distilling, as an independent, stand-alone com-pany. Anchor Distilling will remain un-der the ownership of Tony Foglio and Keith Greggor and will continue to be led by current president and CEO Dennis Carr. For now, Anchor Distilling will con-tinue operating out of the San Francisco facility it shares with Anchor Brewing, but Foglio tells Impact that his com-pany will be relocating. “We’re going to move out of the building, but we’ll stay in San Francisco,” he says. “We’re go-ing to do a distillery and a new visitor center.” Foglio adds that Anchor Distilling will keep its existing equip-ment when it moves to the new site. The Anchor…

• BARON PHILIPPE DE ROTHSCHILD S.A. has appointed Shaw Ross International as exclusive U.S. im-porter for its Mouton Cadet brand and Pays d’Oc varietals, effective im-mediately. Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s branded wines were pre-viously handled in the market by Constellation Brands. Baron Philippe de Rothschild joins Château D’Esclans, Château de Bligny, Château Carbonnieux, Château Les Trois Croix and Sacha Lichine in Shaw Ross’s existing French import portfolio. Mouton Cadet currently sells about 135,000 cases in the U.S. annually, according to Impact Databank. • BEAM SUNTORY HAS EXTENDED Jim Beam with a new Vanilla flavor. Jim Beam Vanilla is a blend of Kentucky straight Bourbon whiskey with Madagascar vanilla bean liqueur. The new entry is at 70 proof and re-tails at $15.99 a 750-ml. bottle. Join-ing Apple, Kentucky Fire, Honey and…