Joe Wagner On The Sale Of Elouan And Plans For The Future
Yesterday news broke that Joe Wagner’s Copper Cane Wines & Spirits has agreed to sell its 130,000-case Elouan brand from Oregon to local player Stoller Wine Group for an undisclosed sum, taking Stoller’s volume up to 300,000 cases annually. Moving forward, Copper Cane intends to focus on its existing California-based portfolio of wines including Quilt, Threadcount, Belle Glos, and Böen. SND executive editor Daniel Marsteller spoke with Wagner to hear more.
SND: What went into the decision to part with Elouan?
Wagner: Elouan for us, being a California producer, had its own unique set of challenges, transportation and logistics being one. Labeling limitations was another. And as our Copper Cane portfolio has evolved there’s a complementary nature and storyline between our Quilt, Threadcount, Belle Glos, and Böen brands, while Elouan continued to operate as an Oregon-focused brand. It did phenomenally well, and we’re really proud of what we were able to achieve with it.
But as we started talking to people up in Oregon it became apparent that there was a desire for someone like Stoller to take Elouan on, and it fit hand in glove. It’s going to be in the right home, and we’re going to be able to focus on the brands that are here in our back yard that complement each other.
SND: What are your objectives with the remaining brands in your portfolio?
Wagner: The focus is really on those core four brands I mentioned. We want to continue to tie together Quilt and Threadcount. If someone is looking for an everyday red wine or Cabernet at $20, they can get that level of quality they expect from Copper Cane in Threadcount. And if they’re looking for something more exemplary of Napa Cab, they can move up to Quilt. (Editor’s note: About 80,000 cases of the flagship Quilt Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon were produced for the 2022 vintage, priced at $55 a bottle.)
The same is true for moving consumers up and down the price ladder between Belle Glos and Böen. We want to have a luxury wine in Belle Glos at $50 and then something more approachable at $20. It so happens that those are the price points that are really working for the American consumer.
SND: How do you see the overall pricing environment evolving so far this year?
Wagner: Right now it seems it’s hard for people to justify going out and spending $150 or $200 a bottle for the enjoyment of wine when they can find something at a similar level at $50. And I think that those very high price points can dissuade both both existing and new consumers. We’re trying to bolster the confidence level of regular wine consumers. Whether they’re being hit by interest rates cutting into discretionary spending or just uncertainty in the economy, people still want to enjoy the finer things in life, and we want our portfolio to be one of the leaders in providing that.
SND: What’s your take on the broader industry dynamic in California currently?
Wagner: There’s a running joke that every winery up and down California is for sale. Changing times call for reassessing your business, and I think that this deal with Elouan really does showcase that there’s still confidence out there about opportunities for wine moving forward. There are people interested in acquiring brands and continuing to build them up. The industry’s not in freefall. We just don’t know exactly how it will look in five years. I think we’re getting close to the bottom, and we’ve just got to hold tight and go forward and market correctly and evolve along with the new consumers and we’ll see this tide lift back up.
SND: How is your spirits business developing?
Wagner: We have a Bourbon, rye, single malt, and then we’ve got a brandy and an apple brandy. They’ve been doing well in California, but we don’t have the inventory of aged spirits to expand beyond that. I don’t see a real ramp-up for another two to three years, although we might go into a few other small markets to test in other regions of the U.S. We’ll be very engaged and cautious as we do that so we don’t have any major out of stock issues.
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Tagged : Copper Cane, Elouan, Joe Wagner, Stoller
