Fruit wine windfall for rivals
Published:Sunday | December 19, 2021 | 12:12 AM
Bakers are finding fruit wine alternatives this Christmas amid a shortage of the market-leading Red Label Wine, resulting in new business for rivals.
“We have experienced a 35 per cent increase in our retail fruit wine sales this season,” said Alecia Burgess, director of finance at Lama Syrups and Wines.
“We have certainly found an uptick in our sales due to the shortage of other brands on the market,” said Burgess, even while acknowledging that some patrons are still “going from store to store to source Red Label”.
Lama operates from Hagley Park Road in Kingston and has supplied the retail and commercial baking trade for decades.
“As a manufacturer of fruit wines, we have had the opportunity to offer to new customers an option for them to use in their baking,” Burgess said.
Spirits company J. Wray & Nephew Limited (JWN), the maker of Red Label Wine, expects the shortage to end next February or well beyond the busy Christmas season. JWN, which bottles the wine locally, says it has sufficient ingredients but is facing a packaging shortage, that is, bottles, caps, and labels, for the product.
“We have supply-chain issues so are not fully meeting the demand for Red Label at this time,” said Tanikie McClarty, senior director, public affairs and sustainability at JWN. “But we do have stocks in the market, and the team is working to get bottles, labels, and caps,” she said.
The size of the Red Label market was not disclosed. Households and commercial bakeries use the product heavily during the Yuletide season to make Christmas cake.
Athelene Hammond, a baker, described Jamaica as “Red Label country” but said that since the pandemic, she has been forced to test out other brands. She ended up using the Cal’s brand.
“I used to use Red Label, but over the last two years, I switched to Cal’s because I just couldn’t find it in the supermarkets,” said Hammond, who makes cakes and puddings under the Mauds Kitchen brand.
“Even this year, I would have mixed both brands, but I never saw any Red Label,” she said.
J. Wray & Nephew, Jamaica’s leading spirits company, mostly produces rum under the Appleton and Wray & Nephew brands. The company, owned by Campari Group of Italy, made $13 billion in total sales year to date September, outpacing pre-pandemic sales by 25 per cent, as reported by its parent. Red Label sales are not disaggregated in those numbers.