Matthew Knott
Syndey Morning Herald

Despite being described by a panel of wine buffs as ''excellent lighter fluid'', Casella Wines' Yellow Tail brand transformed a small family business into one of Australia's largest wine companies in less than a decade.

With more than 2 million people drinking Yellow Tail each day, it is arguably the Australian wine industry's most spectacular export success story.

Casella Wines began in 1965, when newly arrived Italian migrants Fillipo and Maria Casella began selling grapes from their 16-hectare farm at Yenda, near Griffith, to local businesses. The family began producing bulk wine in 1969 but did not launch a vintage until Yellow Tail in 2001.

Clever marketing, a bargain price tag and a sweet, uncomplicated flavour aimed at the lucrative US market resulted in worldwide sales soaring from 500,000 cases in the first year to more than 10 million cases a year.

Within three years of its launch, Yellow Tail was the most popular imported wine in the US.

''It just went like wildfire; it was like something you read about in textbooks,'' the wine commentator Dennis Gastin said.

Johan Bruwer, associate professor of wine business at the University of Adelaide, said: ''It is the fastest-growing wine brand in modern history.''

The success of Yellow Tail - whose label is dominated by an image of a yellow-footed rock wallaby - spawned a legion of so-called ''critter'' wines, including Little Penguin, MadFish and Crocodile Rock.

Dr Bruwer said bold branding had contributed to Yellow Tail's popularity but the role of flavour should not be underestimated.

An expert panel convened by the Los Angeles Times in 2003 judged Yellow Tail's chardonnay ''reminiscent of pineapple juice'' and ''excellent lighter fluid''.

But at $US7 ($8) a bottle, Dr Bruwer said it had one of the highest quality to cost ratios of any wine on the market.

''There's wine-making excellence involved, not just wine marketing excellence,'' he said. ''The packaging sells the first bottle, not the second, the third and the 10th … Consumers aren't stupid.''

Dr Bruwer said the Casella family had wisely decided to play to the Australian wine industry's strengths by focusing on shiraz and chardonnay.

But when the value of Australian wine exports to the US plummeted last year, some pointed the finger at the Casellas.

''Consumers came to equate Australia with wines that were flavourful but also cheap and frivolous, a perception that became a major liability when those same consumers got interested in more serious stuff,'' the American wine writer Mike Steinberger wrote last year. ''Rather than looking to Oz, they turned to Spain, Italy, and France.''

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