Endeavour Group loses top winemakers as it retreats from struggling wine business

Endeavour Group, one of Australia's largest alcohol retailers, is pulling back from winemaking with a severity that signals how troubled the business has become. The company will shutter more than half its wineries, cutting from seven operations down to three. Two of its most accomplished winemakers—David Bicknell from Oakridge Wines and Michael Fragos from Chapel Hill—have already departed, casualties of a restructuring that new chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka is calling a "strategic transformation."

Bicknell's exit after nearly a quarter-century at Oakridge stung. He had taken what he describes as a broken operation and built it into an industry standout, and his announcement of the departure came via Instagram with a tone that mixed gratitude and raw disappointment. "They say you never know you're going to get boned until you do," he wrote, before thanking his team and signing off with characteristic bluntness. Oakridge, located in Victoria's Yarra Valley, is now for sale, though it continues operating while Endeavour seeks a buyer. Bicknell will be replaced by Tim Dexter, a senior winemaker who has worked alongside him since 2023. Fragos, who spent 22 years leading Chapel Hill in McLaren Vale, departed days earlier. His winery—a 13.69-hectare vineyard—has been closed as the company hunts for a new owner.

Endeavour's move reflects a deliberate choice to abandon what it now views as peripheral to its core mission. The company acquired Oakridge through its Paragon wine portfolio in 2021, but the wine business has underperformed. In May, Endeavour signaled its intentions: it would focus Pinnacle Drinks, its wine arm, on retail and divest from what it termed "non-core winery and agricultural assets." Hrdlicka framed the shift as necessary, saying the company would concentrate on "brands and assets that customers value most" and build a more focused private label portfolio. Endeavour will keep the Chapel Hill, Riddoch Coonawarra, and Krondorf Barossa brands but sell the vineyards and physical infrastructure that support them.

The timing of this retreat underscores a broader crisis in Australian wine. Heartland Wines, a red wine producer in Adelaide, collapsed into voluntary administration this week carrying $3.6 million in debt. Treasury Wine Estates, which owns the storied Penfolds brand, reported a staggering loss of nearly $650 million in its February results, much of it driven by weakness in international markets. Darren De Bortoli, a celebrated winemaker, has begun uprooting shiraz vines in New South Wales regions like the Riverina and Rutherglen. His reason was blunt: the market price for grapes has fallen so far below the cost of production that continuing to grow and make wine no longer makes economic sense.

What Endeavour's pullback signals is not a temporary downturn but a structural reckoning. The company is betting that its future lies in selling wine, not making it—in being a distributor and retailer rather than a producer. For Bicknell and Fragos, both of whom spent decades building their reputations and their wineries, the decision feels sudden and final. For the Australian wine industry, already reeling from export pressures and shifting consumer tastes, the loss of two major producers and the consolidation of assets into fewer hands represents another contraction in an already fragile sector.