Amazon launches private brand wines

Under the "Compass Road" name, Amazon has debuted six new private label wines in Germany that are available to Amazon Prime members.

There is a Chardonnay, Dornfelder, Merlot, Pinot Grigio, Grenache Rose and Riesling. Within the last year, other retailers have launched new private brand wines or revamped private wines such as Lidl, Gelson’s Markets, ALDI, Target and 7-Eleven, joining retailers such as Trader Joe’s and Costco Wholesale that have been successfully selling their own wines.

In addition, in a meeting with Store Brands at the Private Label Trade Show last month, Marco Saladini, trade commissioner for the Italian Trade Agency, said the country’s wines seem to be on trend and ripe for private brand partnerships with retailers for the year ahead, so the category seems to be garnering some attention.

In October, Amazon launched its own brand of gin called Tovess Gin in the U.K., but the retailer has had issues with wine in the past. In 2017, the company partnered with King Vintners to exclusively sell wines from that company at Whole Foods Market stores and online, only to scratch the business shortly after it launched. The retailer also invested $30 million in wineshopper.com, a wine e-commerce site that was ended.