- Bad Boys Story

Bad Boys Booze Company

BBBC’

Thanks for checking out Bad Boys Booze Company. OK, so the name doesn’t exactly evoke those classic images of the sun setting over the vineyards, or people tasting beautifully crafted wine. BUT…

What we do is put back a bit of pleasure and play into the business. Wine is about fun – a glass of wine, a gin & tonic, a cocktail and a bit of fun-ny business.

Many people take the industry too seriously. We don’t. We celebrate with wine, just like you. A birth, wedding or birthday with Champagne. An afternoon with friends and a vino or two at the local. A cocktail at a party on the weekend. Or maybe an icy beer for the footy finals. Even in death, we celebrate the life of the loved one with a charged glass and remember the good (and maybe not-so-good) times that were shared. 

We are another wine site. You might say, “So what?” Well, the bones of this business rest on more than 30 years’ experience buying and selling bulk wine between wineries throughout Australia and supplying wine to many of the major supermarkets in Australia. We know what’s good and we know where to find it for you.

One dark day we got shafted by those Big Bad Bullies so we decided to take them on. A bit like David and Goliath, but we are one Big Bad David – we’ll take on anybody. We even get in the ring and have a few fights. We get down and dirty and bruised. 

We’ll also use our contacts to get the cheekiest deals on the most interesting wines and spirits. We’ll recruit any bad-ass we can get to help us get a great deal… we did ask Eddie Obeid but he’s shut up shop for the moment. 

A Bit of History

The Old

The family came from Europe, via England, as £10 poms on the SS Canberra. Dad was in the Royal Irish Dragoons in the British Army and my grandfather was a Sergeant of Police in the British Police Force in Egypt. Further back, my great grandfather was the biggest wine merchant in Egypt, in business with his brothers. We’re talking about late 1800s early 1900s. They were a well-known family. Obviously in those days everything was transported by ship and train so all the buying was done personally. There were six brothers, of varying personalities. One of the brothers went on a buying trip to Europe and purchased a couple of containers worth of wines and spirits – by today’s value, maybe $1.5 million in stock. But the brother was a gambler and, you guessed it, by the time the train left the port of Marseilles and the ship reached Egypt there was not much stock left. He was not a good gambler. My grandmother, now in a clubhouse in the sky, gave me photos from those days so the evidence is there. 

Talking about my grandmother, she was one tough granny! The family owned a wine shop in Enmore, New South Wales, next to the Enmore Theatre, which I worked in as a kid too. (I’ve got some stories about that place and the Rolling Stones for another time.) Well, it was about 1977 and my grandmother, born under the star sign of Leo – which says it all – was working in the shop. A bloke walks in with a shorn-off shotgun and demanded the money from the till. My grandmother, Mary, roared at him, “You got to be joking?!” The would-be robber shouted, “Shut up old lady and give me the money!” My grandmother said, “No way, you know how hard it is to make a living? I’ve got to pay taxes to the Government, and they are bastards and you want me to give you my money!” My grandmother opened the till, threw a couple of hundred bucks at the man and told him to get out. The robber was dumbfounded, took the money and ran. Moral of the story? Don’t mess with a bad-ass Greek grandmother. 

As a family business, we’ve been involved in the global wine industry for decades, from vineyard to retail. During those years, we’ve sold millions of litres of wines to wineries and retailers, small and large, throughout Australia and the world. I trained as a winemaker and marketer at Roseworthy Agricultural College and I know and love this business from grape to glass. Some of my fellow winemakers from college are now among the leading lights in the industry – good blokes, and some female winemakers too. At one point I was importing a lot of new barrels into Australia and became a specialist in cooperage. I enjoyed the fine art of predicting how different varietals would respond to varying degrees of charring and different woods. Quite technical but fun stuff. For the past couple of years, I’ve been a taster for Master of Wine Rob Geddes’ “Gold Guide” (aka Australian Wine Vintages). So what does being a taster mean? Well for this edition, I tasted and rated with Rob 600 wines from hundreds of wineries around Australia. Bad for the teeth, but great for keeping on the pulse of what’s happening in the industry.

At Bad Boys we really know our wines and winemakers, and wines we’ve blended have received consistent praise from many of Australia’s wine writers. In one form or another, you’ve probably tasted at least one of our wines from Coonawarra, McLaren Vale, Clare, Margaret River, Orange or Mudgee. You just wouldn’t have known it was us. Good Living, Wine Press and Good Weekend are just a few of the publications our own wines have been featured in. I was recently at Heathcote in Victoria to blend a super shiraz and shiraz viognier. I’ll let you know when that stock comes in.

The New

Bad Boys Booze Company is the culmination of our experience, and a new venture into wine business for us. We’re not just another wine site. We know there’s plenty of other wine sites out there, doing what they can to woo you with all manner of bells and whistles. We, on the other hand, intend to keep it fun. Hence the name, a few clever tricks, and a bit of hype, a couple of tricks up our sleeve and good value, by Bad Boys Booze Company. 

Through our established contacts around the world, we will be importing and offering a mix of products, through our website, direct to your door, without delay. We are working on a quick delivery system. 

To start off, we’ll be offering a selection of brands of wines and spirits you already know and enjoy. But even as you read this, we are negotiating with suppliers all over the world to bring to you new, innovative and exciting new drinks to help celebrate those special times. There’s a few other exciting phases in store, too. But we can’t give away our game plan too early – or our competition might try to cut us off. We’ll brew you a special beer, distill a whisky and keep blending ripper wines. 

Quality & Service Guarantee

Bad Boys Booze Company is about quality. In many cases when you purchase cheap wine that’s exactly what you get – cheap wine. Other buyers taste to a price. We don’t. If it’s not good, we won’t sell it.

Bad Boys Booze Company offers quality wines, spirits, premixed drinks and beers at the best prices, delivered to your door within 24 to 72 hours anywhere in Australia. This is a vast country to service, and sometimes circumstances beyond our control (such as natural disasters) might hold up delivery. We’ll follow your orders right to your door in these situations and keep you informed all the way.

Industry Support

One of the main reasons Bad Boys Booze Company has been set up is to provide an outlet for small to medium wine businesses online. We will always stock the brands you have come to know and love, but we encourage you to try some of the lesser-known brands we’ll be sourcing from family wineries and small wine businesses.

The wine industry is under pressure globally, from supermarket chains and other conglomerates who seek economies of scale through mass production of homogenised wine. This is the antithesis of what wine is all about, and it’s choking small to medium wine businesses.

We make it our mission to keep them going, by providing a place for them to sell online with minimum fuss. It’s a great industry – with an abundance of passionate individuals who apply fine craftsmanship to their wines. In fact, the reason we are able to offer such great prices is due to the friends we have made over the years, who are willing to supply us at lower prices – savings we will pass on to you!

There are fantastic wines in Australia and around the world, and most of them you won’t find on the shelves of bricks’n’mortar retail. Let us introduce you to them. Watch our site grow as more great wine businesses join our ranks, and help us keep wine breathing.

Nasty Bad Competition – should we love them cause they’re bad?

All our wines are at competitive prices. You might see some wines cheaper at other places but they are selling below cost to suck you in and get you to purchase other stuff at inflated prices. We buy just as well as the others and therefore can offer you a great price. And remember, we are a small independent family business, not a multinational public company that screws down suppliers. You know, we sold heaps of wine to the big boys and so we are more familiar with the true cost of wines than they are, ’cause we are also winemakers!

 

Bad Boys Booze Company

customerservice@badboysbooze.com.au

Sydney

New South Wales

Australia