Endeavour snaps up long-term supplier in latest premium wine buy

A 25-year-old McLaren Vale winery run by two brothers is the latest business to be snapped up by Dan Murphy’s operator Endeavour Group as it expands is premium wine portfolio.

Endeavour confirmed on Wednesday it was adding Shingleback Wine to its Paragon Wine Estates business for an undisclosed sum. It’s the second McLaren Vale business in the portfolio, alongside Chapel Hill, which the company bought from Switzerland’s Schmidheiny family in 2019.

Shingleback was founded in 1997 by brothers Kym and John Davey, who have overseen a 120-hectare family estate planted predominantly with cabernet sauvignon and shiraz.

Over the past two decades, the company has won a number of wine prizes, including the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy in 2006, and released a portfolio of brands including Shingleback, Red Knot and The Gate.

Kym Davey said the duo had mixed emotions about the sale but would stay close to the company, including farming the vineyards for the brands under Endeavour ownership.

“My brother and I had achieved what we were trying to achieve,” he said. The pair had come to the view that the best chance for ongoing growth of the brand was with new owners.

China’s wine tariffs have not had a significant effect on the business, which primarily exports to markets such as New Zealand and the UK.

Director of Endeavour’s Pinnacle Drinks arm Paul Walton said while the group’s primary focus was now to invest in growing the handful of winemakers it had recently bought, the business was still eyeing new acquisition opportunities.

“We will continue to look at options in the future if and when they come up. We certainly hope that the opportunities continue to come up,” he said.