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Darryl Weinbren and long time colleague Richard Carras have inked a joint venture with Charton Hobbs, Canada's largest privately owned wine importing company.
The result is a new Western Canada based fine wine agency, Authentic Wine and Spirits Merchants.
Darryl and Richard worked together for 17 years, building Vintage Consultants Ltd. into the leading wine importing agency in Western Canada, representing key global wine houses such as Wolf Blass, KWV, Robert Mondavi, Masi, Gaja, Henkell and Sohnlein, Oyster Bay, Cono Sur, Louis Latour, Warre's, Kenwood, Ferrari Carano, Quady, Rudolf Muller and Tyrrell's. Vintage Consultants was sold to Remy Canada in January 1989 and later merged into what became Maxxium Canada in 1999.
Richard then joined Robert Mondavi, working his way up in the organization and ultimately overseeing their export business throughout Asia, the Americas and Canada, until Robert Mondavi was taken over by Constellation Brands earlier this year. Darryl stayed on as President of Maxxium, building it into, at one point, the leading importer of wine into Canada with sales exceeding 2.25 million cases.
After stepping down as President in the Fall of 2003, Darryl started his own company, WineBrenWines Inc., which serves as the basis of this new joint venture company.
Darryl and Richard both have invaluable experience and relationships in the world of wine, and will use this background to focus on building a top quality, service oriented sales and marketing team. In addition, they will work closely with key management at Charton Hobbs to acquire agency rights for premium international wine brands, ensuring growth for the new venture.
Charton Hobbs will provide the back office services, such as finance, payroll, IT, and logistics, ensuring stability and resources behind the scenes, and leaving Darryl and Richard free to run the front end of the business. In addition, the linkage with Charton Hobbs will provide national coverage to suppliers through wholly owned Charton Hobbs subsidiaries Authentic Wine & Spirits Merchants in Ontario, and Societe Commerciale Ville-Marie in Quebec. Charton
Hobbs is Canada's largest privately owned wine importing company, representing leading brands including Ruffino, Santa Carolina, Sogrape, Louis Roederer, Mommessin, Fetzer, Bolla, Banfi, Gray Monk, Finca Flichman, Perrin, Gruppo Italiano Vini, Wingara and Barton & Guestier.
