Frescobaldi opens office in Bordeaux 

The family-owned Tuscan company demonstrates its understanding of the value of the Place de Bordeaux – and its limitations.

Frescobaldi CEO Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja wants to open up new distribution channels by going to Bordeaux / Credit: Thurner PR
Frescobaldi CEO Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja wants to open up new distribution channels by going to Bordeaux / Credit: Thurner PR

Frescobaldi is the first wine company in Italy to open a sales office in Bordeaux, for its Masseto, Ornellaia, Tenuta Luce and CastelGiocondo brands.

It is not enough to produce top-class wines, explained Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja, CEO of the Frescobaldi Group, you also have to master their communication and find perfect forms of distribution.

One of these is the Place de Bordeaux, the global virtual marketplace run by the negociants of Bordeaux who have increasingly welcomed top wines from other regions onto their platform. Patrick Lachapèle, who previously worked for Baron Philippe de Rothschild, and later for Ornellaia and Tenuta Luce in Asia, Africa and Central America, will run an office in Bordeaux that will open in the first quarter of 2022 and handle sales of the four brands.

Unlike the chateaux of Bordeaux, however, the new operation will not entrust all of its wines to the negociant system. For each brand, Frescobaldi will maintain control of a number of markets where it has already established its own distribution.

So, Masseto wines will be available on all markets via la Place, apart from Italy, the US and Canada, and for Ornellaia, Frescobaldi will still manage North America and all of Europe. The negociants will be responsible for Tenuta Luce sales in Asia (except Japan), Africa and the Middle East, while they will only be selling CastelGiocondo in China.

As top Italian wines like these find new fans and customers in scores of countries, it makes great sense to exploit the network la Place has successfully created for the crus classes of Bordeaux. But the Tuscans have no reason to abandon the highly effective routes to market they have also built up in key regions over a rather shorter period.

After 700 years and 30 generations, the Frescobaldi family are far too wise to put all of their precious eggs in the same French basket.

 

 

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