Castel, France’s largest wine company, has bought Bordeaux wine merchant Oenoalliance.

Oenoalliance employs 87 people, handles 40m bottles of wine annually, and has a turnover of €45m.

Franck Crouzet, communications director at Castel, told decanter.com, ‘Oenoalliance has a good diversity of clients, complementary to our own, and we hope to expand into new markets.

‘We will be keeping the site and facilities, developing technical capabilities, and maintaining the brand name. We will also construct a water treatment plant to further Oenoalliance’s already strong environmental credentials.’

Castel – owners of the Nicolas and Oddbins retail chains – is one of the biggest landowners in Bordeaux, with 14 chateaux and 2,500ha of vineyards rented in a series of partnerships.

The purchase was completed on April 30, 2008.

Written by Jane Anson in Bordeaux

Jane Anson
Jane Anson

Jane Anson was Decanter’s Bordeaux correspondent until 2021 and has lived in the region since 2003. She writes a monthly wine column for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, and is the author of Bordeaux Legends: The 1855 First Growth Wines (also published in French as Elixirs). In addition, she has contributed to the Michelin guide to the Wine Regions of France and was the Bordeaux and Southwest France author of The Wine Opus and 1000 Great Wines That Won’t Cost a Fortune. An accredited wine teacher at the Bordeaux École du Vin, Anson holds a masters in publishing from University College London, and a tasting diploma from the Bordeaux faculty of oenology.

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