By James Atkinson
Premium Hunter Valley winery Tulloch has refined its product portfolio to more closely suit the various sales channels of independent and national retailers and the on-premise.
Tulloch Wines CEO Christina Tulloch told TheShout the winery now has four distinct ranges: Tulloch, Vineyard Selections, Heritage and Limited Release.
“As our area managers go in to the customer, they should be able to look at the Tulloch portfolio very quickly and identify which products are going to be suitable for that customer,” she said.
Distributed nationally through independents and the on-premise, the Vineyard Selections range is the most recent addition to the Tulloch portfolio, giving customers such as restaurants exclusive access to more premium variants of Tulloch favourites, such as the Verdelho.
“The Verdelho is not something that people in the on-premise will want to have on their wine list if they can see it really cheaply at Dan Murphy’s,” she said.
“But they like and respect the power of the Tulloch brand, so being able to produce wines under a slightly different label with a different offering was what was behind that.” [continued below]
Julia, Jay and Christina Tulloch
Introduced in 2012, Tulloch said the Vineyard Selections range also aims to showcase the best parcels of fruit from the vintage, highlighting the winery’s key attributes of quality, history, heritage and tradition.
In its third year, the 2014 Vineyard Selections releases will consist of a Verdelho, a Chardonnay, a non-vintage cuvee and a Shiraz, meaning that Semillon will exit the range.
“Semillon at a reasonable price point is a hard sell. People who like Semillon tend to be your connoisseurs, so they’re happy to pay a bit more,” Tulloch said.
“We’re actually having a lot more success with our higher-priced Semillons than we were with the Semillon in that range.”
Tulloch told TheShout that vintage 2014 is off to a flying start in the Hunter and the early results are fantastic.