global wine ventures, page-4

hi guys,

I won't pretend to know the share market, or profess to be a corporate expert but i do know the wine industry.

I've had an intimate relationship with Xanadu since the early nineties. I watched with pride as the company grew and floated and then watched with shock and awe as they merged with Normans.

It seemed that at the time everyone in the wine industry knew Normans where a dog except Xanadu, driven by greed, and dissy with the bulging capital raising of the float, Xanadu went on a spending spree that was very foolish.

Was it the Little guy who just discovered steroids syndrome? i don't know but they seemed to want to surpass Cape Mentelle overnight. then the borrowing started and the rest is history. After 20 years of building, a great brand name was destroyed in 2 years, and eventually sold off with some of the assets.

About 18 months ago, one of the founders of Chataeu Xanadu, XAN and a prevous director told me to stay away from the stock.

But times have changed since then and i purchased while the stock was down, after all at that price it was better than a lotto ticket and possibly beter odds!

The sell oof and debt settlement looks good and the bail out by the distributors of lavazza coffee is a good move forward. They already have a good premium wine portfolio and need a great Margaret river wine in the portfolio. Xanadu, or now unfortunately called Global Wine Ventures ( i hope they didn't pay someone to come up with that name) has always had great vineyards, and not being comitted to fuit contracts is also a good thing.


The new distributors have an in already in the important premium restaurant markets this is critical for the future of their premium wine sales. The wine glut may be reducing for premium wine sales but it will continue for the discount volumn market in the retail chain stores for some time yet, as pointed out recently by the CEO of Lion Nathan.

our high dollar is not helping exports and GWV needs to get credibility back into it's products and brands localy before it can move forward. Discount wine and bread and butter volumns can follow later when there is a market for them. The lesson to be learned from all this is that it doesn't matter how many wineries and vineyards you buy, you won't make any money if you don't know how to or can't sell it.

the diffrence between wine and gold stocks is that people buy gold but you have to sell wine.

I'm confident that with good brand names, great packaging and outstanding quality that Margaret River is capable of, and the right chief winemaker, (John Wade would be good) the new investors/distributors for GWV should get us there, but you wont see any results until after this summer trading.

There's one last hurdle that GWV needs to overcome, Sam Atkins has to go, it's time for someone new at the top.