CASELLA WINES TO SELL MAJORITY OF ITS VINEYARDS
CASELLA Family Brands, the nation’s largest privately owned winemaker, will sell the majority of its vineyards across prime wine growing regions in New South Wales and South Australia in the biggest vineyard sale in recent history.
The move also marks a radical strategic shift for the 53-year old family-owned winemaker.
Casella has launched the sale process for its vineyards and accompanying land and property covering 7258 hectares across 35 properties in NSW and South Australia, representing around two thirds of its total vineyard footprint. Up for grabs will be vineyards that produce grapes for Casella’s global blockbuster wine Yellow Tail as well as other brands that feed into its rapidly growing portfolio of wines.
It is the biggest single sale of vineyards as one lot in living memory in Australia and should raise tens of millions of dollars for the Casella family, which is planning inject the fresh cash from the sale into its growing wine brand portfolio and to create new alcoholic beverage brands including its ambitions for its burgeoning whiskey distilling.
Since 1969 the Griffith-based Casella winery, founded by Italian immigrants Maria Casella and her husband Filippo, had built up its large vineyard holdings to cover some of the best wine-making regions in Australia.
But now the Casella family, led by second generation owner and managing director Giovanni “John” Casella, are pivoting to a new strategy of a “capital light” or “asset light” model, whereby the majority of its vineyards will be owned and operated by a third party. This will unshackle the Casella family from the onerous and expensive job of running the vineyards and allow them to then concentrate their efforts and investments in the Casella wine brands, growing export markets and moving into new beverage categories such as spirits, beer and seltzer.
John Casella said the decision followed an extensive review and aligned with a strategic objective to focus resources on setting the business up for long-term success.