If you are walking around your local BWS, Vintage Cellars or Dan Murphy's store and wondering who makes which wines, here is a list of wines made by Coles and Woolworths under their private labels.
December 2011 update: Earlier this year Woolworths purchased the Cellarmasters Group. You can now find the list of Cellarmaster Wines private labels on this site.
Rather than labelling these wines "Woolworths Select" or "You'll Love Coles", the wines look like they are produced by a winery-owned brand with names like Daybreak Estate, Amiri and Crittenden & Co.
As a small vineyard and winery I will declare my interest in ensuring there is some shelf space left for branded products, but as Coles and Woolworths control 45% of the retail liquor market, I believe it is in everyone's interest to ensure that by 2015 the liquor industry is not "totally absorbed by the supermarket industry" as suggested in an IBIS World report.
Coles and Woolworths control around 1350 outlets under the banners of Liquorland, Vintage Cellars, Theo's, 1st Choice, Dan Murphy's, BWS and Woolworths Liquor.
According to a quick scan it seems they have around 100 private labels between them. These private labels reduce potential shelf space for genuine growers and producers and allows them to be ultra price competitive as they have removed the middle man.
The wines are not bad, as described in an article by Max Allen in The Australian as he blind tastes some of the private labels against some of the leading wines in their categories.
The list might be incomplete, some of these brands might be spirits or not on the shelves yet. Let me know in the comments, I am happy to update.
Here is the information to help you to know who makes your wine.
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