Diageo eyes sale of wine business worth more than £1 bn

Diageo plc is mulling the sale of parts of its wine business, which may fetch the world's largest producer of spirits more than £1 billion.

The sale, initially reported by Sky News, would be the biggest under the company's CEO Ivan Menezes, who took over from Paul Walsh in 2013.

Diageo, best known for its Johnnie Walker whisky, has a small wine division that accounts for just 4 per cent of annual sales of $15.5 billion.

Diageo produces a range of both new world and old world wines including, Sterling Vineyards and Beaulieu Vineyard.

Its portfolio of wines includes Blossom Hill, Chalone, Justerini & Brooks, Piat d'Or, Sterling Vineyards and others.

The London-based company owns wine merchant Justerini & Brooks.

It also owns 34 per cent of Moët Hennessy, the spirit and wine subsidiary of LVMH Moët Hennessy - Louis Vitton SA and markets its champagnes Dom Pérignon in South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, Botswana, and Lesotho, and Moët & Chandon in France, the US, the UK, Japan, and Germany.

In a statement issued to Sky News, a Diageo spokeswoman said, "Diageo has a great wine business with great brands that are growing. We are sure there are many people who would love to own our wine business and we have received expressions of interest over the years.''

"As you would expect we have a duty to consider any such interest carefully," she added.

Diageo, which recently took full control of Vijay Mallya's South African beer company United National Breweries (Diageo to buy out Mallya stake in South African brewery ), has recently put its Gleneagles Hotel complex on the market with an expected price tag of more than £200 million.