The Rathbone Group will launch a new Xanadu Wines brand into liquor stores in six weeks, joining several other Margaret River producers in targeting the $15 to $20 price category.
The Rathbone Group will launch a new Xanadu Wines brand into liquor stores in six weeks, joining several other Margaret River producers in targeting the $15 to $20 price category.
The label, Dragon, has been available at restaurants since late last year and will be available in bottle shops in March.
Xanadu joins Sandalford and Evans & Tate in creating a new premium wine brand in the upper end of the sub-$20 category.
Sandalford has brought out the Protégé label, which features fruit from its Margaret River property and is positioned between the cheaper Element brand and more expensive Sandalford stable. E&T did something quite similar last October, releasing its X&Y label, which sits above its Margaret River Classic brand but, at about $17 a bottle, well below its E&T wines.
Sandalford Wines chief executive officer Grant Brinklow said the crowding category was in part due to the booming economy, with more consumers “trading-up” on their everyday drinking wine.
“The growth in the market at the moment is in the $15 to $20 segment and wines from Margaret River,” Mr Brinklow said.
“There are very few Margaret River shiraz or cabernet merlot varieties that stack up at that price point and we thought that we could deliver it.”
While the Protégé range was initially released late in 2005 it was expanded and relaunched in September. The range includes four wines produced from Margaret River fruit as well as a rose, which is made from grapes from across WA.
The bigger wine producers are not alone in targeting an increasing number of consumers prepared to spend between $15 to $20 on a ready-to-drink wine.
Arelwood Estate owner Garry Gosatti is behind a new label, Plan B, while Edwards Vineyard has launched Tiger's Tale, and Flying Fish Cove has introduced the Cuttlefish label to the market.
Mr Gosatti said Plan B was priced at around the $15 mark and was a collaboration with industry stalwarts Bill Crappsley, Terry Chellappah and Martin Miles.
Mr Gosatti said the label aimed to bring a bit more fun back into the wine game while at the same time offering consumers a good drop at a reasonable price.
“Arlewood is, of course, plan A and it’s at the serious end and very much a long term proposition,” he said.
“But it is very easy to get too serious in the wine game, and after one too many glasses of red a few of us decided we would put some fun back into it.
‘‘The wine still has integrity and the wine is still made using fruit from a single vineyard.”
Plan B’s website provides a good idea about the type of fun the wine buffs are having.
The site claims, for example,, there are: “meagre quantities” of merlot, which tastes “sinuous, vinous yet somehow frivolous. Juicy plum, blackcurrant and forest floor flavours combine with soft tannins and great length. It’s the moustache on the rugged face of merlot.”
Darren Rathbone, technical director and winemaker for the Rathbone Wine Group, said Xanadu’s Dragon label would be positioned above the winery’s Secession brand and below the Xanadu label, and would consist of four wines – a sauvignon blanc semillon, unoaked chardonnay, cabernet merlot and shiraz.
Mr Rathbone has been developing the wine with the Xanadu team since his company, backed by his wealthy businessman father, Doug Rathbone, bought the Margaret River vineyard for $26.2 million in 2005.
