THE award winning winery Simonsvlei recently announced a groundbreaking deal which the cellar has struck with some renowned French Champagne producers.
At the Champagne Classic Golf Tournament, held at Paarl Golf Club, Jannie Vermeulen (Simonsvlei’s Director of Marketing) announced that Simonsvlei, with its history of pioneering decisions and strategies, had capitalised on the trend that has opened up the SA market for the introduction of imported wines.
This culminated in a unique transaction between Simonsvlei International and two giants from the French wine industry.
First was a transaction with Castel Frere, a family-owned wine, beer and mineral water empire based outside Bordeaux. Castel is in the top 5 companies in the world, selling more than 38 million cases of wine a year with an annual turnover of more than R8 billion (this is bigger than the entire SA consumption of wine!)
Castel owns 15 chateauxs in France, and it has the largest barrel maturation cellar under one roof in Europe, with a capacity of 50 000 barrels.
Its wine range consists of more than 500 different wines and the prices range from about R50 a bottle right up to tens of thousands of Rands for some of the exclusive Chateaux wines.
Simonsvlei will be the sole SA distributor of Castel wines.
The second transaction was with Vranken Pommery Monopole, the second largest champagne house in the world.
VPM produces 9% of the world’s champagne and this translates into 19 million bottles a year and an annual turnover of R2,5 billion.
Their champagne range consists of five different levels of champagne and Simonsvlei will be importing three of those five ranges exclusively.
They are the entry level - the Heidsieck Monopole champagne, retailing for about R350 per bottle; the Demoiselle range retailing at about R400 per bottle; and at the top, the Diamant range, retailing from R800 and more per bottle.
