Case Studies
Issue No. 5 - April/June 2002
Andrew Garrett Vineyard Estates
On a Wing and a Promise
The new Andrew Garrett Vineyard Estates is not so much a phoenix as a reprise of history as it should have been. The man himself, a flexible and ebullient character with a gift for giving wine consumers, what they want, still orchestrates the winemaking but the AGVE business is now considerably better equipped to exploit that talent than Andrew Garrett alone.
Rising to prominence during the 1980s, Andrew was a prototype ‘personality’ winemaker. He built his label partly on his ability to deliver good wine at a price point, partly on his high marketing profile.
Success was finite, however. Andrew Garrett Wines diversified as it grew, taking on not only winemaking but hospitality, through the McLarens on the Lake venture. Acute need for capital to fund expansion developed. The Suntory Group took up a majority interest in the early 1990s, and then sold the enterprise to Mildara Blass in 1996.
Uncomfortable as a corporate cog, Andrew soon retired from the business he founded; unable to stay retired, in 1997 Andrew formed a consortium to develop premium vineyards at Yarra Glen in the Yarra Valley, Victoria. To utilise his winemaking skills he established the branded wine business, AGVE in 1999. Unable to use his name on a front label, he revived an intellectual property — the Kelly’s Promise label, named after McLaren Vale founder Dr Alexander Kelly – and blended it with the popular duck image.
“Research revealed that consumer and trade awareness level for the McLarens on the Lake duck logo was quite remarkable,” says Brenton Atkinson, AGVE’s chief executive officer, who joined the business three years ago from a corporate background with Berri Fruit Juices. The McLarens facility was sold, and the duck became part of the Kelly’s Promise identity.
Last year the extensive Yarra Glen vineyard, the second largest planting in the Yarra Valley, was merged with AGVE, and Victorian investors injected cap...
