The Big Brands 2: Constellation Brands

"Mis en bouteille dans Avonmouth"

One of the first lessons one may learn about buying wine is to look for “estate bottled” on the label as a clue to quality. The point of estate bottling is that the wine remains fresh, un-oxidised and does not need to be sanitised and neutralised for bulk transport. The following article is from the British Bottlers’ Institute and is as far away from “Mis en bouteille a la propriete/Chateau” as you can get.

I’ll do the maths for you: The “Tank farm” in Bristol holds over six million bottles at a time!

“Constellation Europe have recently built and commissioned a new wine filling facility and Bonded Warehouse and the site management team kindly agreed to a visit by The British Bottlers’ Institute. Constellation Europe is part of the worldwide company, Constellation Brands, which is the largest wine company in the world.

Built on a 43 acre Green Field site, close to Avonmouth Docks, supplies of wine are imported from all over the world as part of the objective of filling as close to the customer as possible. Wine is off loaded from container vessels in 24,000 litre tanks and transported to the site for discharging into an automated Tank Farm. There are 42 nitrogen pressurised tanks each holding 55,000 litres for feeding 2 bottling lines, and a further 42 tanks feeding 3 bag-in-box lines which can also hold fruit based products as well as wine.

The filling hall features 2 new glass bottling lines provided by Krones as part of a turnkey project which included tank farms and unloading equipment. Each line is rated at 24,000 bph. The 100 head fillers are equipped to adjust fill levels automatically and have automatic CIP cups and quick change bottle handling parts. Labelling machines apply pressure sensitive labels and each line has an Accutower buffering system prior to labelling as an effective bottle accumulation for smooth line flow. Boxes of wine bottles are palletised on Pressant palletisers and stretchwrapped using Aetna equipment. There is sufficient space for at least two more similar bottling lines.

The 400m by 300m high bay bonded warehouse is fully racked with storage capacity of 85,000 pallets. To demonstrate their desire to give high levels of customer service they can and do make deliveries with 52 sku’s (That’s brands to us) on one pallet.”

Constellation are based on the East Coast of America. Some of their UK brands you may recognise are: Fish Hoek from South Africa, Nobilo and Kim Crawford from NZ. Ch Reynella, Banrock Station and Hardy’s from Australia and Echo Falls and Paul Masson from the USA. They are also responsible for such nasties as “Tudor Rose”, “VP” and “Rougemont Castle” fortified, and, rather oddly they distribute, Stones Ginger Wine, Country Manor and Babycham!

They also now own the UK’s biggest wholesaler, Matthew Clarke.

Giving a tip in a national newspaper on how to choose wine, an eminent wine writer advised that the simplest measure was to avoid anything with an animal on the front label or “Constellation” on the back label: not bad advice.