LGTrotter wrote:
Roy thanks for the information. I may be being a little slow but I take it this moving up of the prices of existing W+K wines(softening up for the presumably larger hikes that occur when Taylor appears on the label) will occur across all the distributors for TFP and not just the US/scandinavia?
Correct, this will be in ALL markets. So my advice is to buy as soon as possible if you are looking to re-up your personal stocks of any W&K product. Price increases have already been put in place in Gaia, but they were minimal increases, as of last month.
As opposed to just being deceptive, which still doesn't sound great, actually it sounds kind of worse. Also I am not sure who you are thinking benefits from Arbitrage on this occasion? And I am intrigued by your comment that TFP are trying to remake their image; do you mean soley in the Colheita market? from the picture it looked like they are continuing on the wood-aged line, but I may be misunderstanding.
Maybe I phrased that wrong, because I do not believe TFP is trying to be deceptive, they are trying to re-brand and create a new line that has been all the rage. They see their chief competitor, SFE rolling out 1952, 1969, 1982 Single Harvest Reserves and also many others in recent years like Vallado's Adelaide "Tributa", a small run of W&K old Colheitas, Wine & Soul's 5G and their very own Scion to name just a few. I have been asked not to specifically mention several others that are known to be in the approval stages, but this is not going to be a fading trend any time soon. These "limited release" bottlings bring in the big bucks and neutralize some of the cash-neutral sales of things like LBV's in markets like the UK and even lower tier Ports in USA and elsewhere. Special Categories is the focus of the smart ... successful Port producers. It is where the vast majority of a Port company's profit is derived, unless we are talking huge bulk producers like Cruz or Rozes as examples.
The buyer benefited from the arbitrage. They wisely saw the end of an era, no family heirs to take over and were one of the first to approach the previous owners who were no longer willing or able to continue as is. The buyer had a ton to gain, including valuable real estate, very significant stocks with which to propel their own Tawny Ports with indication of age and create an entirely new market, Taylor Colheitas and Single Harvest Tawny Ports. This is a market in which they only played for a decade, during their relatively brief ownership of Delaforce. But, they learned quite a bit about those wines during those 10 years or so. I hope this clarifies my points for you.