Yellow Tail

Australian wine brand whose early-21st-century growth in the US, from a standing start, set records in the history of branding and gave birth to the infamous ‘critters’ (small animals on labels) wine category. The Casella family had just 16 ha/40 acres of vines in riverina and supplied bulk wine until John Casella with an aggressive, export-orientated manager planned an assault on the embryonic US market for Australian wines in the late 1990s. A first attempt failed but new branding involving a yellow kangaroo image and the irritating but eye-catching logo [yellow tail] (sic), together with particularly fruity, not to say sweet, wines and a bold profit-sharing scheme with their US importer W. J. Deutsch & Sons paid off. Annual US sales rose from 200,000 cases in the launch year of 2001 to 7.5 million in 2004, by which time Yellow Tail was the top imported wine brand in the US. By 2014 the Casellas were exporting 12.5 million cases to more than 50 countries.