Top 100 CEO Interviews
Issue No. 31 - October/November 2006
Best foot forward
Celebrating patriarch d'Arry Osborne's 80th year has been hectic but pleasant for current CEO, Chester Osborne. d'Arenberg wines shone at the International Wine & Spirits Competition in London, the Concours Mondial in Brussels and San Francisco International Wine Competition.
At the SA Restaurant and Catering Awards in July, d’Arry’s Verandah restaurant was named best restaurant in a winery for the second year in a row.
Chester himself was named among international wine critic Robert Parker Jr’s Top 40 wine personalities of the year.
With red stripe wines being exported to 50 countries exports amount to 70% of d’Arenberg’s production, but before the mid 1990s, Chester says, export was ‘very minor’.
“My father said, ‘Export! You don’t want to mess around with that’. But if you want to, I’ll put it all on you to organize," Chester says. "So in 1989 and 1990 we started looking at the UK and the US and started going to Vinexpo (the world’s premier wine exhibition, in Europe).
Russia is the newest international market and a measure of success is that d’Arenberg is the top-selling premium wine brand in France. Chester was dumbfounded when given a standing ovation at a tasting dinner there when he showed his three flagship wines to distributors.
“We’ve been giving dinners to celebrate Dad’s 80th and we got 130 (top retailers and distributors) in New York. It’s very hard to get New Yorkers to go to anything…”
d'Arenberg employs 160 people. In the growing season Chester spends four to five hours per day in the vineyard. Fruit handling is “traditional” to the point where d’Arenberg uses foot treading to crush grapes. Chester insists all wines get an initial stomping, at least.
But using methods he describes as “garagiste” to handle fruit gently gives way to ISO9001 quality assurance as winemaking proceeds. This...
