Seppelt sale hands Great Western to a Stonier-led group

Treasury Wine Estates has agreed to sell Seppelt to a group led by Aaron Drummond, chief executive and co-owner of Stonier, for an undisclosed sum.

The Seppelt sale covers the brand itself, the Great Western winery in western Victoria with its cellar door and vineyards, and the Drumborg vineyard near Portland on the cold southern coast. Completion is expected in mid-October.

What the Seppelt sale includes

The big groups are shedding names they no longer need at scale.

Seppelt was founded in 1851 by Joseph Seppelt in the Barossa Valley. The Great Western winery dates from 1865 and came into the company in 1918, bringing with it The Drives, a network of underground cellars cut by out-of-work gold miners from 1868 and still the largest of its kind in Australia. Drumborg, first planted in 1964, is one of the coldest commercial sites in the country and the reason Seppelt became a reference for Australian sparkling wine and cool-climate shiraz.

"Seppelt holds a distinctive place in Australian wine, with a proud history shaped by generations of winemakers," said Angus Lilley, TWE's managing director for Australia, New Zealand and Europe. Drummond called the chance to build on that record "an absolute privilege".

Why TWE is pruning its portfolio

The Penfolds owner told investors in June that it wanted a shorter brand list and a simpler production footprint, and has been looking for around $100m of balance-sheet savings after a full-year loss of close to $650m. Seppelt sits in the part of the portfolio TWE has labelled non-core, which in practice means historic and respected rather than profitable at the volumes the group needs.

For the buyers it is the opposite calculation. Stonier is a Mornington Peninsula producer of pinot noir and chardonnay, bought out of TWE's own stable in 2021; adding Great Western gives Drummond's group a sparkling base and a piece of estate with a story attached. Australian wine has spent three hard years on oversupply and weak exports, and South Australia's growers have needed a rescue package of their own.

Neither side has put a number on the deal. What the sale does confirm is the direction of travel: the big groups are shedding names they no longer need, and the people buying them are the ones who used to work there.