It's a significant time for the wine industry.
Endeavour Group, the company behind Dan Murphy's and BWS, has announced a major restructure of its wine business, selling several winery assets and shifting towards a far more flexible sourcing model. Treasury Wine Estates has also revealed it will reduce its global portfolio, concentrating its investment on a smaller number of flagship brands.
As these major conglomerates move towards sourcing grapes and bulk wine from the broader market to supply the brands they own, the focus shifts from building great wineries to building brands that look like wineries.
When you buy a bottle of wine, you naturally assume the name on the label is the winery that made it. You expect there's a vineyard behind it, a family whose livelihood depends on every vintage and a winemaker whose reputation is attached to every bottle.
That's not what you're buying.
You're buying a brand that's been created to look like a winery.
Photo of Claude Bulland who purchased
Château de Fuissé Famille Vincent in 1862. He brought back a medal from the universal exhibition of 1876 in Paris, establishing the domain’s reputation.
Why It Matters
As Australia's largest wine companies move towards more flexible sourcing, the focus shifts from building great wineries to building great brands.
That's not necessarily a question of quality.
It's a question of provenance.
Who grew the grapes? Who made the wine? And whose reputation is behind the name on the label?
For us, those questions matter because wine has always been about more than what's in the bottle. It's about place, people and the stories that only real wineries can tell.
Photo of Marina Cvetić and her daughter Miriam continuing Gianni Masciarelli’s pioneering vision, keeping Masciarelli proudly family-run and globally renowned since 1981.
Why Europe Continues to Inspire Us
This is one of the reasons we built DiVino around independent European producers.
Across Italy and France, thousands of wineries remain family owned, with vineyards, knowledge and traditions passed from one generation to the next. They're not brands created for supermarket shelves. They're real wineries where the family name on the label belongs to the people who grow the grapes, make the wine and stand behind every vintage.
Take Lungarotti in Umbria, where the family has helped establish the region as one of Italy's great wine destinations. In Abruzzo, Masciarelli transformed the reputation of an entire region through a commitment to quality that continues today. On the island of Sardinia, Pala continues a family tradition built around its own vineyards, while Riva dei Frati has been producing Prosecco in Valdobbiadene through generations of family ownership.
France tells the same story. Louis Bouillot has remained family owned in Burgundy since the 1870s. Château de Fuissé Famille Vincent has been in the Vincent family's hands for more than 160 years, with successive generations caring for the same vineyards. In Bordeaux, Château Lanessan continues a long tradition of estate-grown wines, while Château de Chamboureau in the Loire Valley is another example of the independent family estates that continue to define French wine.
Visit these wineries and you'll often meet the same people who walked the vineyards that morning. They aren't managing brands. They're continuing family businesses built over decades (and sometimes centuries!) with every vintage adding to, or detracting from, the reputation they've inherited.
That's the difference.
Photo of
Louis Bouillot in 1901 - he began by riding his bicycle all the way from Nuits-Saint-Georges to Paris to sell the family wine!
Every Bottle Is a Vote
Every bottle of wine you buy is a choice.
A choice to support a family whose livelihood depends on the vineyard they've cared for over generations, or support the profits of a major conglomerate.
So you deserve to know the difference.
Wine has always been about more than what's in the glass. It's about place, people and tradition. It's about preserving regional identities, rewarding craftsmanship and ensuring future generations can continue doing what their families have done for generations.
When family wineries disappear, we don't just lose another wine label. We lose local knowledge, regional character and stories that can't be recreated once they're gone.
Photo above is the Lungarotti family in memory of Maria Grazia Lungarotti (1928-2026), a visionary "lady of wine" and pioneer of Italian viticulture. Alongside her husband Giorgio, she transformed Umbria into a global wine icon. Her incredible legacy of culture, entrepreneurship, and world-class wine lives on through the family winery and the Lungarotti foundation.
The Final Pour
The next time you pick up a bottle, ask yourself a simple question.
Am I buying wine from a real winery, or am I buying a brand designed to look like one?
At DiVino, we'll continue seeking out the families, the vineyards and the winemakers whose names are built on generations of hard work, because we believe those stories are worth preserving.
And that's something worth raising a glass to.