Yellow Tail

...

the best example, probably the c- the two best examples of r- uh, in Australia are probably Ro- at a, at a scale, are probably Rosemount and Casella or Yellow Tail.

Rosemount had a great brand, a very focused management team.

They ha- well, they were a single brand company, so they were...

Not long after that, you know, John Casella was a fledgling winemaker in the Riverina.

He was looking to develop an export market in the US.

A, a distributor that had been distributing Rosemount, I believe, had just lost or had lost a brand, and John Casella was in the right place at the right time, uh, presented Yellow Tail, the distributor liked it, and that brand, you know, went from nothing to 15 million cases in the space of 20 years, and continues to be arguably Australia's most successful wine brand.

And, and people don't like it 'cause it's $9 or, and it's sweet or whatever, but you know, that, that, that's a business that has focused on that brand and they've diversified into, into other labels.

...

Yellow Tail probably didn't help.

Yellow Tail.

[laughs]

You know, that it's a success story on one side, but it really set us up for a tough-

I mean, they do.

They're very different.

Yeah, they're more fruit driven, not in the Yellow Tail sweet style.

Could your wine be fake? Fraud isn't confined to rare or high bottle values.

The UK is awash with counterfeit Yellow Tail.

Why? Why? They literally arrested people with vans full of counterfeit Yellow Tail.

So I guess, you know, if people are gonna buy it, man, you probably turn out a bottle of wine for two, three bucks all the way in, and people that drink Yellow Tail may either...

I don't know.

I don't want to say.

Yep.

I always take my XXX Vitamin water bottles, the extra large ones, and I fill it with the Yellow Tail Pinot Noir and I hide it in my bag.

[laughs]

Nice.

What?

Oh, what's it called? Yellow Tail.

It's got a kangaroo on the bottle.

Oh.

Whereas later in my career, I did get excited about the subregions within Burgundy or Alsace or the Loire.

The first decade was really, I just wanted to know what every consumer wanted, whether it was as silly as Yellow Tail or Kendall Jackson from a supermarket standpoint, all the way to single vineyard Guigal Côte-Rôtie or first growth Bordeaise or Penfolds Grange or, you know, Napa Valley cult wines.

And then at 34 years old, 16 years ago, I started another business with my brother.

I kind of left the day-to-day running of the wine business.

It's always been about we are the cheaper option.

And a friend of mine made Yellow Tail very popular, unpopular in the United States when Troy Hedrick dumped a bottle of Yellow Tail out in with his bulls, and that made a certain statement.

He probably is- We're gonna blame Troy Hedrick as the reason that Australian wine is now in the dump.

Yeah, I tend to disagree with you, and I'm gonna stick up for Australian wines.

Um, the water is an issue here, uh, because it's so expensive to keep those, um, permanent plantings they call them, permanent plantings alive.

They need water no matter what.

Um, and funny you should say Yellow Tail because that's just down the road from us, and it's been out of business now for a while, I think.

Um, but yeah, both of the wineries, um, north and south of me have probably decreased their vineyards by about a third, I would have, I would, um, guessing, but about a third of their winery, their vineyard they've ripped out just in the last two years.