by Hervé Lalau
Few people outside the trade know Joseph Helfrich, the quiet, unassuming Alsatian who is the owner of Grands Chais de France, the company he founded in 1979. With 28 million cases and a total turnover of 570 million Euros in 2005, it is the world's largest
exporter of French wine, moving 400 Euros beyond the border. Already the owner of Eschenauer and Landiras in Bordeaux, the purchase of Calvet consolidates its position there.
Calvet, the number one selling Bordeaux brand in the United Kingdom, is also strong in Japan, Canada and Russia. With a turnover of 20 million euros, 70% of which is exported, Calvet may still be well-known, but it has suffered in recent years as wines from the New World have nibbled away at its market share. The company was not only severely in debt, but had only 35 of the 93 employees it touted only a decade ago.
Better known abroad for JP Chenet, the brand of wine from the Languedoc that it launched in 1984 and has grown to almost seven million cases today, Grands Chais de France also owns Vinival on the Loire, Arthur Metz in Alsace and Jean-Louis Quinson in Burgundy. In September of this year the company signed a strategic alliance with The Wine Group from California, who now sells its products in the United States. In exchange, Grand Chais has taken on the distribution of their brands such as Franzia, Gray Fox, Glen Ellen, Fish Eye, Concannon and others in Europe. Another accord with the Chinese group Dynasty provides them not only the European distribution of those Chinese wines, but also a foothold in Asia s largest country.
With the acquisition of Calvet, Grand Chais de France has become the largest wine company in France, slightly overtaking Castel. At the same time, it rises from 12th to 10th place in the ranking of wine groups world wide.
