Good Grape Wine Company

March 23 2007

Indiana’s Franchise Player

Stop the press.  An Indiana native son winery, Oliver, dropped a press release today announcing anticipated growth.  Significant growth! 

My headline was going to read, “The Arbor Mist of the Midwest,” but I didn’t think that would be fair.  The crown jewel of the Indiana wine market makes a lot of good wine and they do a lot of good for the Indiana wine industry.  Even so, and separate from the point of this post, I was shocked to see that they have released some new wines that pay homage to Arbor Mist—a Mango, Black Cherry and Strawberry wine.  Um … yeah.  As a nice contrasting juxtaposition between big and small wineries, consider Josh at Pinotblogger’s recent post and this winery start-up spreadsheet. 

Despite Oliver’s egregious affront to fine wine lovers via Mango wine, every NBA team needs a franchise player, and Oliver Winery is the state of Indiana’s franchise.  And, fortunately, Black Cherry wine aside, there is no Allen Iverson-type of baggage associated with Oliver, either.

Just the same, Oliver makes a lot of wine that would make a staunch wine lover cry in their Bordeaux.  I’m talking many other semi-sweet wines besides the Strawberry.  The #1 selling wine in the state, based on the concord grape, is called “Soft Red” and it sells by the pallet at Sam’s Club.

But, hey, this is John Mellencamp, Chevy Truck, “Our Country” territory. 

Oliver has built their business by creating high-quality products that appeal to many residents taste preferences, and frankly, they lap other Indiana wineries in packaging.  Their packaging competes with anybody’s in the country, whereas most other Indiana wineries are still fussing around tweaking their own computer (read: bad) art and printing on third-tier labels, Oliver invests in packaging to the extent that nobody looks both ways to make sure nobody notices when picking up a bottle of their Muscat Canelli or their Blackberry wine with enough residual sugar to use it as an ice cream topper.  Check out their new “Late Harvest” packaging and tell me that it’s not attractive.

Their tasting room is very nice as well, competing with 80% of the tasting rooms I’ve been to in California.  I can’t be certain, but Bill Oliver, the president and son of the founder, must subscribe to the current design ethos that indicates that quality in the product is no longer the primary purchase driver—it’s quality in aesthetics, a fundamental value that Target retail stores understand very well. 

But, Oliver does other wines as well, including some fine wines that are distributed in 10 states, mostly in the Midwest but as far afield as Colorado and Louisiana and Virginia.  Their Merlot, Cabernet, Shiraz and Zinfandel are all fine representatives of their varietal.

And, if today’s news release is an indicator, the # 4 hottest 2004 small brand according to Wine Business Monthly may not be considered small for much longer.  Oliver has already grown from 250K gallons in ’03 to an expected 600K gallons in ’07.

This news report indicates that in order to ramp up to the 600K gallons, Oliver Winery has just purchased 12 new stainless steel tanks creating a total additional capacity of 258,000 gallons.  Or, if my math is correct, the tanks will afford an additional 107K cases of production.

The news release indicates that the tanks will be used to produce four main varieties of wine.

I’m not certain, but my guess is that those four varieties will be the aforementioned fine wines and Oliver is going to make a push into national, or at the least, expanded regional distribution. 

Congrats to Oliver—a nice drinking companion to the Indianapolis 500 and John Mellencamp—something to make all Hoosiers proud. 

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