Yellow Tail now makes beer?!

I saw this at a golf course in Hopkinton on tap a few weeks ago but didn't try it. I was curious though.

 

No, looks like it'll be Sunset Lager and Whistling Wheat before those.


"Brewed by Australian Beer Co., Wakley Rd., Yenda, SNW." according to the rear labels.

 

Makes sense, they banked on the newer, uneducated (in wine) sector of the market with wine and they're gonna do the same thing here. The average beer drinker doesn't like hop bitterness and that also will help them with shipping from AUS to US and not having to worry about hops falling off. Their market is going to be the people who are looking at Shock Top/Blue Moon, segueing from the macro's or looking for something a little different but not quite ready to jump into the craft scene.

 

Do you think this factored into the Ballast Point name change five years ago?

 

That's the rumor. Trademark for beers and wines fall in the same category. A winery I used to work for was approached by a brewery for a similar reason once.

 

Can't wait to see what kind of wine barrel-aged beers they start turning out..

 

NSW not SNW

 

My first guess would be the Wine folks sought the name change and BP went along. Could even be that BP inspired YT to begin brewing as well.

YT is pretty much a mega company when it comes to wine and has had a presence in the US for quite a while. So it wouldn't surprise me to find out they had a Trademark on the use of "yellowtail" for alcoholic beverages.

Nor would it surprise me that they decided to establish a US presence in beer as well, especially since they already have the bit about getting the beverages from Australia to the US marketplace pretty much solved and so could do so for less money than a regular Aussie brewery. (Assuming the beers are actually brewed in Australia.)

 

If critter beers are not already a thing, they will be soon.

 

I'd try it. I have had a cooper's australian ale, and it had... *cough* fallen off a bit, I thought, due to shipping. I bet they have better logistics.

 

I think you're right about it falling off a bit because of shipping, etc., etc. I've had Coopers here in the states (but only once... ) and wasn't impressed. But in Sydney, fresh on tap it is quite nice.

 

The story I heard from one of their reps was that Yellow Tail filed a C&D over the name, and rather than fight it Ballast Point said "Give us a bunch of money and we'll change the name", which YT agreed to. Supposedly the chunk of cash from that was what allowed them to buy the distilling equipment and dive into the world of spirits and canned cocktail things.

 

I have never had any of the Yellow Tail beers, but I'd bet big that any Cooper's fresh would blow any YT beer out of the water. I had many Cooper's beers in Adelaide (brewery location) and elsewhere in Australia and liked them all, especially the Sparkling Ale. They do sit around a bit here in the US.

 

I should clarify. I wasn't wondering if Ballast Point changed the name because of Yellow Tail. I was wondering if Yellow Tail's objection to Ballast Point was related to this new venture. Maybe they saw the venture as a possibility back then and were paving the way regardless. I have no idea.

 

I've seen this at TW Norfolk for the past month. I'm like "Yeahhhhh.... no."

 

Well, it seems I left out possibly relevant bits of information behind my thinking. Some actual IP lawyers sometimes participate in Trademark discussions in the beer news forum. From listening to them I've found out that a US trademark, e.g., Yellowtail, does not seem to require you to be based in the US but that you do business in the US and it also requires that you vigorously defend your trademark or lose it. But trademarks are both specific and generic. A wine trademark would actually cover any alcoholic beverage, whether wine or not. It would not cover, say, the name of a breakfast cereal. So you find an alcoholic beverage company using your trademarked name on their alcoholic beverage, you either protect it or you lose it regardless of which alcoholic beverage is involved. On the other hand you can do nothing about the breakfast cereal.

Given the timing of events (the Ballast Point name change 5 years earlier and the recent introduction of new Yellowtail beers) I think the most likely scenario is that the lawyers representing the large wine company, as a matter of routine self-defense, asked the beer company to "cease and desist" using the name "Yellowtail" on an alcoholic beverage. (It's what you have to do if you don't want to lose your Trademark and also don't want someone else riding on your coat tails and benefiting from your investment in developing name recognition.)

I think that later on a different set of executives decided they could diversify the Yellowtail product line within the alcoholic beverages category by having a new line of beers contract brewed that carried name recognition, that did not require a lot of additional hassle in getting product on shelves in many US states, and which targeted a couple of potential niches. One niche in the growing US wine marketplace as a spin off for wine drinkers who might want to try a beer or two but don't want the bitterness, and the other in the flavorful beer market place for that subset of folks who don't want the bitterness. (Notice that the growth of the wine and beer markets have both been much more dramatic in the last 5 years than in the 5 years before.)

Now its possible that the beer was already in the planning but that plan would not have to have been there at all to trigger the name change request. Timing also seems critical in that if you see a product as a growth opportunity to invest in, I don't think it would take 5 years to get a contract brewed beer thought up, brewed, and into the market place if you are already planning to do it. I think even in a large company it would take less than 5 years, and so I'm arguing that the plan did not exist at the time of the BP name change but may have been triggered by that name change.

TL;dnr: I think, given the size of Yellowtail, that the BP name change happened on auto-pilot, would have happened even if there had never ever been Yellowtail beers now or on the drawing board, and that the line of new beers was thought up later, possibly triggered by someone noticing that a beer named "Yellowtail" had been successfully sold in the US.

 

Pretty sure this is a subsidiary of Coca-Cola in Australia, I'm sure this is the same stuff that is marketed as Yenda here in Aus. Don't bother.

 

What I've seen would agree that Australian Beer Co. is a subsidary of the Coke folks in Australia. The odds are the Yellowtail and Yenda beers are much the same or very similar beers in both the US and OZ. But Yellowtail will be the owner of the Yellowtail brand and seems to be having it contract brewed there in Yenda. Do you have a sense of how long the Yellowtail brand has been available there in OZ? (A brand called "Yenda" will probably be owned by someone other than Yellowtail.)