One of Margaret River’s oldest and most prestigious wine brands, Cape Mentelle, has been sold by its French owner in an estimated $20 million deal with a major Australian retail group.
Cape Mentelle, one of Margaret River’s oldest and most prestigious wine brands, has been sold by its French owner in an estimated $20 million deal with a major Australian retail group.
It is understood ASX-listed Endeavour Group, the $11 billion owner of Dan Murphy’s national liquor chain and ALH Hotels, has led the acquisition of Cape Mentelle from France’s luxury brands conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
The structure and details of the deal were not available to Business News but Endeavour Group has a track record of recent purchases and Margaret River has been an obvious geographic gap in its portfolio.
It made two winery acquisitions in the past year in deals that appear particularly focused on the brands and operational control of their related infrastucture, including hospitality and cellar door venues.
Cape Mentelle's wine operation has 135 hectares of vineyards on 245ha of land and produces around 30,000 cases a year, ranking it 18th last year in the Business News Data & Insights WA wineries list. Its cellar door is just 4km from downtown Margaret River on Wallcliffe Road.
Founded in 1970 by David Hohnen, Cape Mentelle is considered one of Margaret River’s ‘founding five’ wineries.
It is understood an LVMH representative travelled from France to break the news to Mr Hohnen today.
Mr Hohnen also founded the globe-storming phenomenon Cloudy Bay, also an LVMH brand, which helped put New Zealand on the map for its white wines after he launched it in 1985.
Endeavour Group was a spin-off listing from retail giant Woolworths in 2021. It owns Dan Murphy’s, Cellarmasters and BWS liquor stores, ALH Hotels, and has been amassing some premium wine labels under its Paragon Wine Estates division since the acquisition of Chapel Hill in 2019-20 financial year.
While the terms of the deal were not yet known, the unconfirmed sale represents a twist from the most recent major vineyard deal in the state’s south.
The 182ha Edinger Estate was acquired a few days before Christmas for about $10 million by Belvino Investments, a part of CK Hutchison Holdings, dominated by Hong Kong’s richest person, Li Ka-shing.
In the Cape Mentelle case, the share register of seller LVMH is dominated by Bernard Arnault, a French businessman thought to be the world’s richest person, having overtaken Elon Musk as a result of the dramatic drop in the Tesla share price.
Cape Mentelle is Endeavour Group’s eighth wine brand purchase, following McLaren Vale’s Shingleback, a 26-year-old producer sold by founders Kym and John Davey in August.
The Shingleback acquisition includes the wine brand portfolio, a long-term lease of the McLaren Vale cellar door and an ongoing grape supply agreement from the 112ha property.
The addition of Cape Mentelle marks Paragon’s first entry into WA adding to its key brands in premium regions being: Oakridge Wines (Yarra Valley), Chapel Hill (McLaren Vale), Krondorf (Barossa Valley), Riddoch (Coonawarra), Josef Chromy Wines (Tasmania) and Isabel Estate (Marlborough, New Zealand).
Established in 2004 by Josef Chromy, the eponymously named brand was bought in April by Endeavour Group in partnership with Warakirri Asset Management an agricultural investment manager for an reported $55 million.
Under the terms of that agreement, Endeavour Group will lease the winery, 61ha vineyard, restaurant and cellar door from Warakirri Asset Management’s diversified agriculture fund on a long-term basis.
It is believed Cape Mentelle had become something of an orphan in the LVMH portfolio and production was well below the volumes it made in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when its growth was funded by then partner and ultimately 100 per cent owner Veuve Clicquot, which in turn was taken over by LVMH.
In the 2009 Book of Lists, Cape Mentelle was WA’s ninth biggest producer with about 120,000 cases.
