mrdamian.com: Gallo ensures Cork goes with a bang

January 20, 2006

Gallo ensures Cork goes with a bang

The historic Irish city of Cork is to be blown up later this week after it was purchased by the Californian wine merchants E. & J. Gallo.

The move, which has been met with considerable anger in the Emerald Isle, has been caused by record consumptions of wine which, in turn, has result in a world wide shortage of cork.

Demand for quality wine has been driven by low prices and a change of perception around what wine is, and who drinks it, seen for example in the Hollywood movie Sideways.

'Wine is no longer just for snobs,' said Mr Damian's food and drink critic Anthony Lush.

In the last three years alone wine consumption across the globe has grown by some 150% with Californian wines seeing growth at over fives times above that figure.

A Lush

It's this demand for the grapes of the Napa Valley, matched by the worldwide shortage of cork, which has seen Gallo make a number of surprising business moves in recent months.

Popped
After buying the Australian hat manufacturers 'Shane' last November they caused outrage Down Under by withdrawing their most popular product, a green hat with corks dangling from the rim, only to put it back on the market a couple of months later minus the corks.

Over Christmas the group made a hostile bid for Bathrooms R Us, a takeover which was rejected by the family firm when it emerged that Gallo were keen on breaking the company up, using their stock of cork bathmats for their own wine orientated purposes whilst selling the rest of the company to the highest bidder.

As a result, the acquisitions team went back to the drawing board, emerging in the New Year with the plan to buy Ireland's second city, to blow it up and then mine it for the cork from which it draws its name.

'We're delighted that more people are drinking our wine,' a spokesman said, 'but we also want to ensure that their experience is pleasurable and that means preserving our products in glass bottles with corks in them.

This move will see residents moved to a wonderful caravan park on the old city borders whist ensuring that wine drinkers can continue to derive maximum pleasure from our products. It's a win win situation.'

Cork is due to be blown up at 9pm BST on Sunday.

Posted by damian at January 20, 2006 04:20 PM

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