The news that the French company EPI has signed a ‘strategic and capitalistic partnership’ with the owners of the iconic Biondi-Santi estate in Tuscany will have come as a shock to many observers of the Italian wine industry. Acquisitions - especially of family-owned wine businesses with histories stretching back to the 16th century - are quite unusual in Italy. Purchases by foreign companies whose focus has historically been in clothing, with French brands such as Bonpoint, Andre shoes, Alain Figaret and JM Weston are rarer still.
However, Christopher Descours, CEO of EPI is far from a newcomer to the wine business. His family has been proprietors of Chateau la Verrerie in Luberon for over three decades and, more particularly, he has overseen the dramatic revival of both the Charles and Piper Heidsieck Champagne brands which EPI bought from Rémy-Cointreau for a reported €400m in 2011.
Bondi-Santi, home of the ‘original’ Brunello di Montalcino in the 1860s, certainly did not need the kind of help that was required for the Champagne brands. Its wines are regularly listed among the finest in Italy and, according to Wine-Searcher, recent vintages of its Tenuta Greppo Riserva sell for as much as $550.00 per bottle. Even so, Jacopo Biondi Santi has faced some big challenges since taking over the business in 2013, following the death of his father Franco, at the age of 91. That year’s harvest was very good, but climatically tricky, and in 2014 he made the huge financial sacrifice of deciding to release no wine as Brunello.
Biondi-Santi also faces far stiffer competition from other top flight Italian wines than in the past. This helps explain why Jacopo Biondi Santi, who will remain as president of the company, says that he sees the partnership as “a strong opportunity to boost the growth of [the] iconic name, [by] capitalizing on EPI’s expertise and knowledge in the super-premium wines & Champagnes”. In particular he hopes to develop a “global network of distribution, marketing and communications” of the kind in which Champagne brands excel.
For Christopher Descours, the acquisition will help his family group to develop the EPI Wines & Spirits division around what he describes “emblematic Houses with strong identities, strong heritage and know-how and with a potential to grow at an international level”.
Robert Joseph
