Chain store wine blasted

THE rising sales of major supermarket-owned wine brands have ignited debate over the impact of private labels and cleanskins on the future of Australia's huge boutique wine sector.

Wine industry leaders fear the growing number of home brand-style wine labels will put small producers out of business as the big two Woolworths and Coles-owned stores increase sales of what is known as private branding.

Big chain liquor stores including Woolworths-owned BWS and Woolworths Liquor and Coles-owned Vintage Cellars have been accused of cutting the route to market for many of Australia's 2500-plus wine producers.

Wine Tasmania chief executive Sheralee Davies said private-label wines, beers and spirits were hard to identify.

"This is an issue because supermarket chains don't clearly brand wine and liquor like they do food with the Coles brand and Woolworths Select," Ms Davies said.

"This allows them to churn out private-label wines to cater to any part of the market they want to target without the consumer knowing it's a bulk wine purchase bottled by a retailer."

Figures show more than 100 labels owned by the two retailers now fill the shelves of at least 2000 outlets across Australia, selling large-volume, directly purchased bulk wine or a purpose-made product in shelf-created brands.

Growth in private label sales of more than 20 per cent in the past year was having a profound effect on the industry, Winemakers Federation of Australia chief executive Stephen Strachan said.

"The opportunities for a lot of our small producers to get to market have been cut off," he said.

"They control the shelf space and that gives them a fair bit of power over the existing brand owners."

Ms Davies said there was no question that after years of fighting oversupply major supermarket-owned wine brands had spiked.

"But there are few Tasmanian wines that produce as much as some of Australia's big wine producers to be in an oversupply situation," she said.

"People recognise that Tasmanian wine equals quality and this brand building is growing which also insulates us a bit more from the cheap wine labels."

Coles Liquor national marketing manager Grant Ramage hit back at the criticism, saying the private label and cleanskin sector of its sales was actually part of the solution to the oversupply of wine.