Accolade Wines has appointed Quintessential – a family owned-and-operated import, marketing and sales company headquartered in Napa, California – to represent some of its iconic brands in the US.
Under the partnership, Quintessential will initially represent flagship Accolade brands including Hardys, Grant Burge and St Hallett from Australia, Mud House and Hay Maker from New Zealand, the Italian Prosecco Da Luca, Stone’s Ginger Wine, and the easy-drinking Echo Falls Fruit Fusions range.
Accolade Wines Chief Executive Officer Robert Foye said the Americas held “huge opportunity as a key growth market for Accolade Wines.”
“Through our partnership with Quintessential, we are excited to bring our amazing, award-winning portfolio of Australian and New Zealand wines – along with our Italian Prosecco, Da Luca – to the US to enrich everyday moments in our consumers’ lives,” he said. “In Quintessential, we have found the ideal long-term partner to drive our ambitions in the Americas. We look forward to a close and successful working relationship.”
Dennis Kreps, who owns Quintessential with his father Stephen D. Kreps, said the company was “always looking for wines that will stand out in terms of quality and great value.”
“Although we began conversations with Accolade more than a year ago, the current market circumstances we find ourselves in make it more imperative than ever that we carefully chose brands we believe we can successfully market and sell – wines with history and heritage that fit with the rest of our portfolio,” he said.
The Quintessential partnership will introduce Accolade’s most famous brands to new consumers throughout the US.
The portfolio will be led by Hardys, which was one of the first wineries in Australia, established in 1853 by pioneering founder Thomas Hardy. Hardys grew into one of Australia’s largest wine producers and is today the second most powerful Australian wine brand in the world and the number one imported wine brand in the UK.
Grant Burge and St Hallett have long histories in the Barossa, one of Australia’s most famous wine regions. Grant Burge is best-known for making the award-winning The Holy Trinity, one of the first GSM blends (Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvèdre), and the winery earned a five- star rating from James Halliday.
Founded in 1944, St Hallett was the first winery to acknowledge the unique qualities of Barossa’s old vines, some of which are more than 100 years old. Three St Hallett Shiraz wines – Core Faith, Core Black Clay and Reserve Blackwell – as well as the Core Gamekeeper Shiraz-Grenache and Reserve Old Vines Grenache are among the first St Hallett wines Quintessential will import.
Mud House and Hay Maker, a Sauvignon Blanc from the Mud House winery, become the first two New Zealand wines Quintessential will represent since it was founded in 2002. Quintessential will initially market the Mud House’s Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and the Mud House Central Otago Pinot Noir.
Quintessential will also market the Da Luca Prosecco and Sparkling Rose from Treviso and the Veneto in Italy, Stone’s Ginger Wine from the UK, and three of the Echo Falls Fruit Fusion wines: Strawberry, Raspberry and Blackberry Rosé Wine; Peach and Mango White Wine; and Raspberry and Blackcurrant Red
Wine. Echo Falls is already the third largest-selling wine brand in the UK.
Read more about Quintessential here: www.quintessentialwines.com
