Treasury Wine Estates goes for brand, not land

Sydney

MANY vintners would love to own enough wine country to cover Manhattan twice over. Not Treasury Wine Estates, maker of the US$850-a-bottle Penfolds Grange.

"We don't have to own all the vineyards," said Mike Clarke, a former Coca-Cola executive who took over in March as chief executive officer of the world's second-biggest wine company. Assets including Treasury's wineries and bottling plants "could be in someone else's hands".

In an industry where winemakers cherish their links to the land so closely that some have occupied the same sites for centuries, that's a radical proposition, according to Phil Reedman, an independent wine consulta…