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Accolade signs three-year British tennis sponsorship for Anakena

Published:  07 December, 2015

Accolade Wines is to spend £500,000 on its newly acquired Anakena Chilean wine brand over the next year.

The investment includes a three-year partnership with the Lawn Tennis Association which will see Anakena become the official wine of both British tennis and the Lawn Tennis Association.

Accolade launched the sponsorship at the British Tennis Champions tournament at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday.

Paul Schaafsma, chief executive of Accolade, said: "This partnership is a fantastic opportunity for Anakena and we couldn't be happier to be working alongside the LTA and British Tennis team, particularly given the recent success in the Davis Cup, which saw the British team beat Belgium to win the tournament for the first time in 79 years. "With general interest in tennis now heightened following this fantastic performance, we're very excited about the 2016 calendar including the Aegon Championships at the Queens Club and, of course, Wimbledon next summer."

Accolade acquired Viña Anakena in September for an undisclosed sum.

Amy White, UK & Ireland marketing director at Accolade, said: "The Chilean wine category is a highly competitive one with popular brands already established.

"In developing the right proposition for Anakena in the UK, we spent a lot of time engaging consumers to best understand what they are looking for in this sector of the market.

"It became acutely apparent, through research, that brands with heritage, provenance and a true story to tell were the factors considered most important.

"Anakena is a brand built on stories and provenance as throughout the range it plays homage to Chile's indigenous people and it's country's pre-Colombian cultures and with the results we've seen in consumer research, we have no doubt whatsoever that as soon as these new wines hit the shelves, the UK consumers will engage positively."

Viña Anakena was founded by Felipe Ibáñez and Jorge Gutiérrez in the late 1990s. It is situated in Alto Cachapoal in the foothills of the Andes.

The acqusition of Viña Anakena gave Accolade a footprint in every major New World wine-producing region.

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