French vintners to launch ‘superbrand’ to stem market slippage
August 28, 2006

Paul Pasternak
Eight of the largest wine cooperatives in France have joined together to launch a planned French wine superbrand’ to be called Chamarré, in a radical effort to stem France’s shrinking global market share of popularly
priced wines.

“Duty free will be playing an important role in the brand’s launch,” according to well known and respected duty free veteran Hubert Surville, who was named CEO President of The Other Wines & Spirits LLC OWS), the company created to manage Chamarré’s growth in the Americas. Surville formerly headed up a Marie Brizard division in the
Americas and most recently was president of the spirits division of Boisset America.

“The new wines will all be blends featuring wines from 52 wineries throughout the north and south of France,” Surville told Insider. “Duty free is a key part of our plans as it serves as a major window to reach our target customers.”

“We plan for a typical 20% to 30% savings over domestic pricing and will be featuring two bottles for $20 in duty free,” he says.

Chamarré is planning to debut later this year in North America after successfully launching in both the domestic French and UK markets. The company has an ambitious objective of being a leading global brand with sales of 30 million bottles by 2010. “Our goal is to be the number one or two brand of French wine in five years,” Surville says.

Chamarré is a type of colorful butterfly and the company intends to play off this name to describe its wines as ‘bursting with color and flavors,’ Surville explains. The attempt to market a brand of blended wines by grape variety rather than by region or appellation is a controversial one in France and is in response to the need to create more
consistency in French wines below the grand cru level from year to year. Travel Markets Insider will be featuring further details on this concept in our October/Cannes magazine issue.