“Designer” private label wines

“Private label” wines are a growing phenomenon all over the world. In Italy, we have been betting on brands such as Coop for some time, looking above all to high level and denomination wines, but not only. In the US, they total more than 17% of all wine sales, and in the UK all the way up to 35%. It is not just a product for big retailers, however, because among high-end restaurants and hotels, the “personalized private label” is becoming more and more the trend, where there are authentic “blending sessions” to create an ad hoc wine for each company. Like the one, for example that Meregalli, leader of high-end wine & spirits distribution in Italy, staged yesterday at the group’s Tuscan winery, Tenuta Fertuna (which signs the private label of Virgin Wines, the wine branch of the Virgin galaxy owned by billionaire and visionary Richard Branson, ed.), where the starred English chef, of Italian origins, Angela Harnett at the Murano restaurant in London, and the chef Luke Holder, at the helm of his eponymous restaurant in the 5-star luxury hotel Lime Wook, in Hampshire “made” their own wine.
“Private labels are doing very well abroad even on single label large production numbers”, Marcello Meregalli told WineNews, “while it is a niche market in Italy, in other words, smaller numbers and reserved more for the personal use of the customer and less for selling to a broader audience. In the future, we will see that this trend will continue to expand towards foreign countries, especially developed in projects including testimonials or famous companies. On the Italian market, instead, we do not see this expansion as strategic, in the short term, but it will definitely continue to be an important sales tool and a service to customers”.