For The Love Of Port

Hi all,

the canadian national french TV broadcaster (Radio Canada) had a 10 minute story on Port Wine industry challenges, last night on the french evening news.

The link to the entire clip is below (aired in French language).

Short summary: A battle between the big guys(Sogrape, Symington, Taylor's) versus the small guys (Niepoort). Many brands controlled by a few lucky owners.

Dirk complains that the large players are spending marketing $$ on sales incentives, brands and packaging instead of pushing product quality and developing the public's knowlege of Port. Symington says they operate with no margins in this business but that one day they hope to have the normal profit margins of the alchool industry.

My comments on the story:
(Yeah right, no margins, so your just burning cash because you love port. There may be a few product lines that are loss-leaders but with the still wine and with port wine don't tell me it is just for the sport or hobby.)

Consolidation is actually old news and probably mostly over for now. What is interesting are all the new small indepentants poping up in the Douro taking a slice of the business. Also the super large investments going on in the facilties, and the investments in the tourism side of the Douro (more hotels, restaurants). The clip comes across as a good publicity for Niepoort which is ok, he deserves it. We like his products.

hope the link works:
http://tinyurl.com/2we8b7

cheers
Paul B.

I've watched it yesterday and I had the same reflexion about Rupert Symington's quotes. It is not impossible, of course, technically but I just don't believe that it is happening in that industry, particularly in the Symington. Group. If there is a lot of producers that disappears in the next 10 years and the prices are going up after, I will say yes, they were probably dealing with irregular margin but otherwise, it's just a marketing way to present the fight between Symington, Taylor and Sogrape.

It was pretty cool to see Dirk van der Niepoort to simply say that this David vs. Goliath war was not going to happen on his vineyard and he prefers to continue what he always did instead of trying to follow...

Thank you for the information guys, I missed that news. I am downloading it right now. I'll be back with my comments.

Gilles Séguin

I guess the port wine industry is like other industry, globalization gets every where. But for me, wilthout condenming larger producer like Sogrape or others, I also like to encourage smaller producer to make wine that represent their ''terroir'', their backyard, and that they make wine (port) that reflect their vineyard, their land.

I hope (and I think they do) that port producers are seing the broder picture, one example is that they still refuse to sell port in bulk, so the whole is more than the sum of the parts !

Gilles