THE WALLABY JUMPS
Professional wine weenies were shocked on Monday by the news that
Casella Wines had switched the local agency representation of their
Yellowtail wines line from that of
Dorothy Budden’s
Vinterra Wine Merchants to
Authentic Wines and Spirits Merchants, a company founded in 2006 by
Richard Carras,
Darryl Weinbren and
Duncan Hobbs as a division of
Charton Hobbs (Canada’s largest privately owned wine and spirits importing company).
It was shock, quickly followed by jealousy, as Vancouver-based agencies have been trying since day one to wrestle the highly lucrative Yellowtail wines account away from Budden, who introduced the world’s best selling Australian wine to BC and Alberta several years ago and helped propel it to its prominent position in the westcoast market.
Authentic will now represent the product in BC, Alberta, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. A highly competent and experienced company, Authentic was no doubt able to argue a case for a larger support infrastructure -- the better to broaden the product’s brand distribution range.
However, everyone knows, even with their greater personnel resources, the boys will still have to get up pretty early in the morning to work nearly as hard for the company as, up till now, Ms. Budden has done on Casella's behalf.
Maybe the least that Casella could have done in return is to have informed her BEFORE they circulated their news release.
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We received the following letter from
Darryl Weinbren and
Richard Carras, principals of
Authentic Wines and Spirits Merchants, as a corrective comment on
our statement that
Casella Wines and Spirits (Yellowtail wine's corporate owner) inappropriately informed the media of their decision to change their agency representation in Vancouver before they had enlightened their former agent of the fact. This turned out to be technically incorrect, although still true in a practical sense in that the unfortunate short timing (less than an hour) involved between the two communications unintentionally resulted in the same situation. We have heard since this news was released that Yellowtail is now shopping for a local public relations person. We do however, wish to apologize to Authentic in one regard. We did not wish to imply that as a company they in particular made any pro-active decisions to win the account, only that the Yellowtail account would be considered as a desirable client by any and all Vancouver wine importing agencies.
From Weinbren and Carras:
We just read the coverage on cityfood.com on March 11 in which Cityfood
acknowledged Casella's appointment of Authentic Wines and Spirits Merchants to represent their [yellow tail] portfolio. Thank you for the complimentary words to Authentic Wines and Spirits, however there are a couple of items incorrectly reported/implied that we would like to clarify.
1. Authentic Wines and Spirits Merchants did not seek out [Yellow tail] wines. It is a policy of our company not to solicit brands currently represented within the wine community. We would find that practice to be unethical and not in keeping with our business culture as well as our personal values.
2. Contrary to what appeared on your site, Vinterra Wine Merchants was made fully aware of the change in agency representation well before Authentic Wines and Spirits Merchants or Casella Wines made any announcements.
As you are aware, Vancouver is a close-knit wine community with agents working together for decades to build a strong wine culture. Our reputation within the wine community is extremely important to us and we would never take any action that would be disrespectful of our fellow sales agents. Out of consideration for the wine community it is with respect that we ask you to set the record straight for your readers.
Sincerely,
Darryl Weinbren and Richard Carras
Authentic Wine & Spirits Merchants 