Victorian wine

Victorian wine is wine made in the Australian state of Victoria. With over 600 wineries, Victoria has more wine producers than any other Australian wine-producing state but ranks third in overall wine production due to the lack of a mass bulk wine-producing area like South Australia's Riverland and New South Wales's Riverina. Viticulture has existed in Victoria since the 19th century and experienced a high point in the 1890s when the region produced more than half of all wine produced in Australia. The phylloxera epidemic that soon followed took a hard toll on the Victoria wine industry which did not fully recover till the 1950s.

Today winemaking is spread out across the state and features premier wine regions such as Heathcote, Rutherglen and the Yarra Valley. Single varietal wines produced in the region include the Australian mainstays of Shiraz and Chardonnay as well as the more obscure Viognier, Pinot noir, Graciano and Tannat. The style of wine ranges from full body red wine to Madeira-like fortified wines such as Liqueur Muscat.

First Quench Retailing

First Quench Retailing was the largest independent off-licence retail chain in the UK, with around 1,300 shops operating under several retail brands, though all have now been closed. Its head office was based in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. On 29 October 2009 it was announced that the company had entered into administration.

History

The company was originally formed as First Quench Retailing by the merger of the Whitbread owned Threshers and the Allied Domecq owned Victoria Wine in August 1998. This brought together the 1,470 Thresher Wine Shop, Drinks Cabin, Wine Rack, "Bottoms Up" and Huttons brands with around 1,500 Victoria Wine Cellars, Haddows, Martha's Vineyard, and The Firkin. Allied Domecq later sold their 50% of the company to Punch Taverns in September 1999.

In November 1991, Threshers, then owned by Whitbread alone, had bought the Peter Bottomfield Dominic Group from Grand Metropolitan for £50m. The Bottoms Up brand of shops, formerly owned by Peter Bottomfield Dominic, was retained. Peter (Bottomfield) Dominic was separated from GrandMet's IDV group in 1989 to become a retail division.