One of Australia’s largest commercial wineries faces an uncertain future. Our weekly wine industry newsletter The Week That Was ponders life without it.
Winemasters SA – which was put up for sale in September but failed to find a buyer – is in administration.
Sad for all involved, not least the Riverland town of Monash, population 1,100.
The site is 21 hectares, the same size as Adelaide Zoo minus the monkey enclosure.
It can store 35 million litres – the equivalent of one-third of the volume of our wine exports to the US.
Winemasters is not dead yet.
Business adviser Eddie Griffith says he is working with sole director David Harris on a deed of company arrangement (DOCA) which he says could see new and existing investors buy the site.
He said, “If the DOCA proposal wins approval from creditors, the facility would be restarted only once the market improves.”
You’ve got to love the optimism.
When will it improve?
The strong message is this is more serious than a classic downturn simply because people all over the world are drinking less.
And from Iron Knob to Booger Hole in West Virginia, no one has any money.
We know that will change eventually.
Savvy wineries are being proactive, not waiting for the market to improve.
When it does, then that is a bonus.
Wineries like Taylors are investing in the art of the sale, a neglected area of the wine business.
People writing off the Riverland should remember that a sustainable commercial wine sector is more critical than ever to introduce people to wine in the first place in the face of new competition from other drinks.
We hope Winemasters survives.
The thought of it sitting there as a reminder of the way things used to be, is painful.
If it’s not to be, the tanks should be turned on their side and repurposed for affordable housing.
Wine has a history of adaptation and resourcefulness.
The last ‘big thing’ rescued was Karadoc, which Treasury Wine Estates sold to wool brokers who stuffed it with wool.
Wool had its own crisis 35 years ago when Aussies could wear only so many hand-knitted cardigans.
Karadoc also stores something vaguely familiar – wine. TWE wine.
Anything is possible.
Stay optimistic.
As for the sober-curious, they will surely get sick of sitting home on Friday night with a broccoli thickshake in one hand and a bowl of green peas in the other, watching the goldfish swim from the shipwreck to the Bali hut.
• First published in our weekly newsletter The Week That Was – the Australian wine industry’s favourite ebulletin since 2006. Subscribe in the form on this page.
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