Having seen its intended merger with Normans Wines fall over with Normans’ inability to offload its bulk wine assets and its subsequent entry into receivership, aggressive Western Australian winemaker Xanadu is apparently showing some interest in Southcorp’s long-awaited fire sale of wineries, which includes the Rouge Homme winery in Coonawarra and Tulloch in the Hunter Valley. Xanadu is believed to be looking at Rouge Homme, whose sale includes 13.5 ha of vineyards, a 12,000 tonne winery and 5.4 million litres of tank storage, but its managing director Andew Moore has said the company is only interested in the assets if accompanied by the Rouge Homme brand name. Frankly, you’d wonder why, since Rouge Homme has been effectively killed off as a quality label by a generation of ordinary Southcorp policy. Southcorp is however prepared to contemplate the sale of the Tulloch name. The Tulloch sale includes the 7,000 tonne winery, a 1,200 barrel storage facility, a cellar door sales and 9.6 hectares of shiraz. The combined price of the two wineries is expected to fetch around $14 million. Southcorp chief executive Keith Lambert says his company will use the proceeds of the sale to expand the Wynns Coonawarra Estate winery, and that the Tulloch operations will be transferred to the new Rosemount winery at Denman. Tulloch was rightly considered to be a classic Hunter label, and although its name has been diluted by some very ordinary verdelhos and unwooded chardonnays which have nothing to do with its traditions, the Hector shiraz underlines its potential.
