To Broadly Go

03 April 2006 By db staff writer

“standfirst”>

First Sherry than cava and brandy, Gonzalez Byass is now aiming to stamp its brand on wine, eyeing a gap in Spain’s export markets. Charlotte Hey reports

There is no doubt that the Spanish category in international export markets needs more fighting brands. Faustino and Marqués de Cáceres do a good job in one corner of the market while Codorníu and Freixenet are pushing into new sectors. But, overall, it is only Torres and Campo Viejo that really stand out when it comes to big brand recognition; the Spanish equivalents of Lindemans and Hardys – Gallo and Blossom Hill don’t exist.

So you could say there’s a gap in the market, though not for very long if González Byass has anything to do with it. Admittedly, it does not have plans for brand domination in the wine league table yet, but it is certainly aiming to make a noise.
Jeremy Rockett, marketing director at González Byass UK, has a vision: “We have the Sherry, we have the cava, we have the brandy. Our aim is to get our branded wine portfolio into the kind of shape where we can offer products in each of the core Spanish product sectors.” A one-stop shop in retail category management, you could say. With properties in Rioja, Castilla Léon, Catalunya and Andalucía, the company is well placed to become category captain.

But getting the wines to the quality and style levels needed by retail buyers, and getting the brand right, is crucial. So important was this to the UK team that they recruited the skills of ex-Marks & Spencer wine guru, Jane Masters MW (pictured bottom left tasting barrel samples).

Towards the end of last year Masters embarked upon a tasting marathon to assess and define the final blends for the each of the wines in the UK portfolio. She admits she has had to spend a lot of time educating the Spanish teams as to the styles of wine that work in export markets – especially the UK.

“UK importers often take their level of consumer insight for granted, but you have to work with the whole team at source to ensure that the whole range stacks up, not just the one wine,” says Masters. “Since the last harvest we have worked on each of the wines in each of the winery portfolios. For example, for the Chardonnays we are producing at Can Petit [a newly refurbished winery northwest of Barcelona] we have been working on how to get more weight in the mid-palate without masking the acidity. With the crianzas, we are looking to increase the fruit but not dramatically change the overall style.”

The next stage is to make sure the wines meet market expectations at the different price points. Listening to the head of the UK winemaking team, Damien Días, it seems that working with Masters has changed his views about how the wines have to stack up. “We have to ensure each of the wines is sufficiently different to be able to be differentiated from the next in style,” he explains. “We have spent a year working on what those resultant wines will look like and how they can be clearly segmented in the range – something which we were perhaps not getting right before.”

Over the past three years, the González Byass company has invested E27 million in Can Petit and Otero (a new property southwest of Madrid in the Toledo DO, producing the Altozano brand) so there’s no doubt it is serious about making a mark in the Spanish category. Enrique Valero, the UK’s Madrid-based still wines director, gives an insight into the company’s vision: “We are now very definitely consumer-driven. We want to supply a solid branded offer, but don’t want to be the Jacob’s Creek of Spain. We want to use our Spanish roots and experience in a modern way to develop brands that meet the needs of consumers in each market.”

González Byass’s decision to diversify the business over the past two decades beyond being dependent on the Sherry brands is in line with overall developments in wine consumption. If its latest venture pays off it will be ahead of many of its peers – even if marketing Spanish wine to the masses continues to remain a challenge. db  April 2006