Some of Australia’s leading winemakers are left owed almost $2 million after the collapse of The Wine Society.
The nation’s oldest wine-buying club, dating back to 1946, has entered administration after its sale to Wine Collective Holdings for less than $1.4 million.
The Daily Telegraph reports The Wine Society has 125 creditors, including Oatleys, Casella and Tyrrell Wines, all of which look set to receive a payout of as little as one or two cents in the dollar, far from the 15 to 30 cents promised by the society’s directors when they recommended the sale.
Wine Collective Holdings has been running The Wine Society since 2016 and will retain ownership of the society’s liquor licence, IP and database when the sale is completed this month.
That database includes about 20,000 active members.
In December 2017, The Wine Society merged with Online Liquor Group (OLG) in a deal that was heralded at the time as creating the largest independent player in Australia’s online liquor industry.
