I talked about this before. A new step in getting the deal done:


http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/05-14-2009/0005026226&EDATE=


The Saint James Company is a US public company, which specializes in the acquisition and distribution of New World wines, and has recently signed agreements for the acquisition of wineries and wine brands in New Zealand and the rights to Olivia Newton John's Koala Blue wine brand in North America, as well as a Letter of Intent to acquire a winery in Australia.


The Company itself says:


As the President of the Saint James Company, commented “Olivia Newton John the brand founder, is herself an Australian icon and with Koala Blue Wines we have captured the quintessential Australian quality of ‘good cheer, quality of life and wholesomeness’. We are thrilled to have formed this partnership with Koala Blue Wines, and expect to generate substantial commercial success with this powerful brand.”
The Saint James Company and Koala Blue Wines invite you to enjoy a taste of Australia. Available soon!

http://thesaintjamescompany.com/koala-blue/

They have the licensing agreement for the North American rights to the KB wines. If Saint James cannot make a go of it then they will release the licensing rights back to the original owner. Saint James also is licensing three New Zealand wineries too. Saint James wants to cash in on the Australia and New Zealand craze that was hot several months ago but has seemed to cool lately.

Right now expensive wines are a luxury and it is a tough sell to market anything in luxury items in the current economic downturn.

One business who catered to the Royalty of Europe and the high powered people of the US just went out of business. They sold exclusive invitations, cards and writing paper to important people. The business was active for over 122 years.

The question on today's news was, Can a celebrity produce a good wine for the market? Koala Blue was mentioned as a celebrity wine that is decent but nothing really exceptional.
Celebrity wine does not sell well in Europe because people are more wine conscious and not into celebrities as much as the US.
And the trouble with the US celebrity wine is that there are too many celebrities that produce wine.
Madonna, Dan Aykoyd, Francis Ford Coppola, Cliff Richard, Olivia, and most of the golfers produce a wine.
Coppola is known to have the most successful wine due to buying an actual wine estate in Napa valley and studing wine process for a lot of years to produce a great commercial wine.

I really hope this deal goes through and that KB wines will be available in the USA. Olivia does not seem to do much support for this brand name anymore though.
From what I remember the red wine was decent. The white wine was horrible though, very bitter. Sorry, I cannot be a blind fan about everything LOL