NZ winery Amor-Bendall goes into liquidation
Get our daily fine wine reviews, latest wine ratings, news and travel guides delivered straight to your inbox.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
A Gisborne winery has become the latest victim of the New Zealand grape glut, going into liquidation owing more than NZ$1.8 million (£911,000).
Gewurztraminer and Chardonnay producer Amor-Bendall has debts totaling $1,838, 652, including $250,000 owed to unsecured creditors.
Its liquidator, Shephard Dunphy explained the company was ‘adversely affected in 2008 by the oversupply in the domestic wine market in conjunction with the global financial crisis and subsequent decrease in demand from the international market.’
The company had tried to target the higher margin restaurant industry unsuccessfully and with rising debts, shareholders placed the company in liquidation.
This is the latest in a string of failed wine businesses in New Zealand, and follows the demise of Stoney Range Wines, Awatere Vineyard Estates, Gravitas Wines, Matakana Estate and Cape Campbell Wines in the past year.
Written by Rebecca Gibb
Get our daily fine wine reviews, latest wine ratings, news and travel guides delivered straight to your inbox.
Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).