Do the management of Treasury Wine Estates remember the Lindemans international experiment?

There is one thing you can be sure of when it comes to marketing people. They love brand extensions. So when Penfolds is the label doing best then put it on a few more types.

What about adding some Chinese spirit to a Barossa red? Surely that will go down well in a country where there are a lot of drinkers who like adding a dash of coke to their Grange? And whack the Penfolds moniker on an old Australian brandy with a cognac type price tag.
Then for good measure see if we can con those oriental mugs with money with a Champagne we will find someone in France to put together for us under a Penfolds label?
That trio of new Penfolds products announced this week should keep the profit growth going.
And be thankful that there is no one left in the marketing department who remembers the last escapade where the predecessor of Treasury Wine Estates decided that the best thing to do with Lindemans as a brand was to make it an international label. Forget about the impact it might have on the reputation of those famous Hunter semillons and Coonawaarra reds. Fill the bottles with second rate South African plonk to ship off to the UK. That should give us some profitable volume.
And so it has come to pass that Lindemans is another of the nothing brands in the Treasury Wines stable. Sad but true.
The Australian wine industry whose reputation owes so much to Penfolds should hope that history does not repeat itself

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