Treasury Wine agrees to buy Diageo Chateau and Estates

[Sean]

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[swirler]

Great info, Sean. Your previous opinion changing post was great, too.

And all done in less than 10,000 words! (sorry )

[grapeobserver]

There are four other phylloxera declared zones in Victoria currently I think - King Valley, n/e Victoria (Rutherglen), Nagambie and Mooroopna (near Shepparton). I am not sure what the current official status of Yarra Valley is, though once phylloxera has struck it can always return and never be totally eradicated.

The Vic dept of agriculture lists the Maroondah area (i.e. a lot of the Yarra Valley) as a current phylloxera inclusion zone. http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agricultu ... ondah-zone. It is certainly a hardy pest, and usually seems to prevail. Interestingly one region that had it - Geelong - was recently(ish) declared phylloxera free so that may tend against the total eradication is impossible point (or at least being unable to prove otherwise), but as the original Aus region struck down by the pest in the 1800s and not particularly far in the scheme of things from the Yarra Valley, only time will tell whether that was the right call.

[odyssey]

With regards to Seppelt and Grampians specifically, having been declared PEZ (Phylloxera Exclusion Zone) means they are allowed to ship the grapes around:

http://www.stockjournal.com.au/news/agr ... 98556.aspx

Phylloxera zone map here:

http://www.vinehealth.com.au/media/phyl ... 092012.pdf

[swirler]

So Coldstream Hills and St Hubert are safe, but Seppelts is doomed....

[Diddy]

In other takeover news, I was reading somewhere recently that Accolade have bought out Grant Burge and Casella have acquired Peter Lehmann.

Not surprised to hear that Grant Burge had changed hands - goes a long way to explaining the excess of Meshach and Filsell flooding the Woolworths retail channels.