Cellar Craft Cellar Craft - Vineco

[cpfan]

Effective today (Oct 28 2011), Cellar Craft has been sold to Global Vintners Inc (owners of Winexpert, Vineco, WineKitz, Heron Bay, and Artful Winemaker). The brand will continue to exist, and be part of the Vineco division.

Obviously no way to know how this will affect the Cellar Craft brand long term. I would guess that the low end lines will be dropped/merged with the Vineco equivalents, but I don't know how well they sell. They are rarely mentioned in the online forums though.

Perhaps this will allow Vineco brands to penetrate the USA. Should improve distribution of the better known (at least in the forums) Cellar Craft Showcase/Sterling kits in Canada.

BTW, this has been confirmed by Tim V on Winepress. (And I stole some of the above info from Tim's post.)

Steve

 

[Wade E]

Thanks for the update Steve!

 

[ibglowin]

I don't see this as good news at all!

 

[tonyt]

Very bad news, more restricted distribution. They seem (Vintners Inc, Wine Expert) seems to like to be the only brand of wine kit in "brew shops". I prefer "Wine Shops", with lots of brand offerings. Too bad some companies are so scared of competition (WE) and too bad such a good brand (CC) just got gobbled up by one of them. Just my opinion. And since I am the customer still, that should count for something.

 

[DrJayman]

This could REALLY suck! Hopefully they (new owners) are smart enough to realize why many are so CC faithful and won't screw it up. Unfortunately, the local shops who sell WE and Vineco do so at such an exorbinate markup it is laughable compared to the quality and price of CC.

Although, I do look forward to getting into real grapes when life settles down, I am in no hurry nor do I hesitate if quality and price suffer. Hope the new owners read this and realize I am not alone in this assessment.

 

[Rocky]

In every challenge there is a gift and our "gift" is that George has the Cellar Craft Showcase on sale this month. This is all inventory that is in the pipeline so it will not be affected by the sale. I just got two OVZ this month and they are cooking away. I am a big fan of the Showcase collection. I would hate to see it change.