Most probably because La Motte is a family-owned winery and has been for its 350+ year history (albeit different families), this article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Australia’s top family-owned wineries doing well in tough times caught my eye.
You can read the entire article here. Below are a couple of paragraphs that I extract from the article which, I believe, convey the essence of the article.
“Australia’s premier family-owned wineries have maintained their profitability through the global downturn, and in some cases improved earnings.
“The strong performance contrasts with the travails of publicly listed wine companies, which continue to suffer from the grape glut and report greater losses to shareholders.
“A study of the leading family-owned wine groups by BusinessDay showed that while many had lower sales last financial year a combination of tighter cost control – especially with marketing and advertising and replacing lost export revenue with better volumes locally – kept the wineries in the black.
“In contrast, the nation’s two leading listed wine groups have issued a string of losses and writeoffs, causing their share prices to plummet and angering retail and institutional shareholders.
“Last year some of the nation’s oldest family-owned wineries joined forces for the first time, establishing a new marketing and lobbying group called Australia’s First Families of Wine with the brief to help change people’s attitudes about the sector.
“It is as much aimed at local consumers as overseas buyers.
“The group, which included Henschke, Tyrrell’s, Tahbilk, Brown Brothers, De Bortoli, d’Arenberg, Taylors and McWilliam’s, wanted to highlight the quality and diversity of Australian wine as well as remind consumers that there was more on offer than the cheap blends being sold by the multinationals.”
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