The Importance of Cellar Doors

As many readers may know, in the recent rationalisation of Southcorp created by the merger with Rosemount, some of the winery buildings have been sold off and many of the cellar door operations have closed.

One of the icons of Coonawarra, the Lindemans cellar door was lost in the rationalisation and it was a reasonably logical step seeing as how there was a very good operation around the corner in the Wynns building.

But before we take this further, lets briefly examine the Rosemount attitude towards cellar doors as evidenced by their original McLaren Vale operation. To call the Rosemount cellar door that was located in McLaren Flat “basic” would be somewhat of an understatement. The building looked like it was an upmarket prefabricated demountable classroom. Considering that Rosemount makes Balmoral and a Show Reserve range, it was very disappointing the last time I was there to find the only wines on offer for tasting were the Diamond Label range.

They obviously feel that cellar doors are not a good return on investment and have inflicted this strategy on the new combined operation. Recently a friend of mine visited the Wynns establishment in Coonawarra and falsely expected to be able to taste some of the Lindemans wines. One may feel that’s a reasonable expectation given the same company owns them both. Bad expectation, think again, no Lindemans on offer for tasting at Wynns!

Will this move save Southcorp money? On paper yes it will, but there are other factors to consider. Firstly, this company is the largest wine company in Australia and has a moral responsibility to help educate their consumers and a commercial responsibility to try and expand the total wine market.

Sure some cellar doors are inflicted with the “lets get pissed drunk bus specials” but they are not a huge amount of the traffic, they just look like it due to the noise generated. There is always the possibility of banning large coaches too. I have been to enough cellar doors to see that a large percentage of visitors are fairly serious about tasting wine, even if they are rank amateurs; they are looking to find wines they will enjoy.

This is a golden sales opportunity and also a great education opportunity too. Recently a friend of mine (Kris Goman) on Auswine Forum stated “I was mildly interested in wine until a trip to SA and three days at a variety of cellar doors. It was after that trip that I became very interested and appreciated wine a lot more after spending some decent time talking to the people at the cellars doors and spending some time tasting there. It really made a huge difference to my outlook on wine and since then I have spent literally tens of thousands of dollars on wine.”

Kris is not unique in this; it was here visit to cellar doors and the eduction and pointers that she received that led to her expensive obsession. This is something the bean counters fail to realise. Just as when they do their numbers they fail to realise that many people continue to buy the wines they try at cellar door for many years, and that doesn’t include those that try wines at cellar door and buy them from other sources when they get home.

The Rosemount accountants need to take their blinkered eyes off the cost line and look at the big picture.

Cheers