From boutique to benchmark
Huon Hooke in Wine Classification Become a member to view this article
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Ten three-merit wines are owned by Treasury Wine Group, including six Penfolds wines. Treasury Wine Estates
The Real Review Wine Classification Feature Week
Who owns the top-performing wines on our Classification?
I looked at the list of three-Merit wines in the 2025 revision of The Real Review’s Wine Classification of Australia, which runs to 67 wines in total.
Family-owned wineries produced, by my reckoning, 41 of the 67 three-Merit wines, which says something loud and clear about our wine industry.Using some educated guesswork, I reckoned that 41 of these wines—or 61%—are from what I would class as boutique wineries (those that crush less than 500 tonnes of grapes a year on average). I say guesswork because many wineries do not disclose their production figures.
Corporately owned wineries produced 12 of the three-Merit wines. Ten of these are owned by Treasury Wine Group, including six Penfolds wines. The definition of ‘corporate’ is another grey area: is the Rathbone Wine Group family or corporate? It is owned by the Rathbone family and includes the Xanadu, Yering Station and Mount Langi Ghiran brands.
I’ve included them as family-owned. The same applies to Morris, which is owned by the Casella family, famous for Yellow Tail.
Family-owned wineries produced, by my reckoning, 41 of the 67 three-Merit wines, which says something loud and clear about our wine industry. These are not necessarily boutique wineries: Henschke, Yangarra/Hickinbotham and Torbreck are family owned but hardly boutique sized.
Overseas ownership? Yangarra and Hickinbotham are owned by California’s Jackson Family, Torbreck is owned by another American, Pete Kight. Bass Phillip is owned by a consortium of Asian owners plus Burgundy winemaker Jean-Marie Fourrier.
Houghton’s top cabernets, Jack Mann and Gladstones, are owned by Vinarchy, a new entity with international ownership. Vinarchy was formed after Accolade Wines merged with Pernod-Richard’s Australian, New Zealand and Spanish wine interests.
Smaller and family-owned entities are disproportionately represented among the producers of the greatest Australian wines.Treasury Wine Estates, which owns Penfolds, Wynns, Wolf Blass and Seppelt brands, all with three-Merit wines in our Classification, is a publicly traded company on the Australian Securities Exchange. Who knows how much overseas investment there is in Treasury.
Can we draw any conclusions from all of this?
Smaller and family-owned entities are disproportionately represented among the producers of the greatest Australian wines. This is not news to anyone who is a long-term observer of the wine scene. After a few glasses of red we are likely to observe that smaller, family-run wineries have the long-term vision, the passion and drive, the commitment and the burning desire to make great wine, that drives the top end of the wine offering.