Forty years after first entering the duty-free industry – and spending his first TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes sleeping aboard a whisky company yacht – Diverse Flavours Founder and Managing Director Anthony Budd is heading back to the Côte d’Azur this year with plenty to celebrate.
“Here I am, 40 years on, still trying to make friends in the travel retail and duty-free industry,” jokes Budd, who will mark four decades in the business at this year’s TFWA Cannes event.
It is a characteristically understated way of describing a career that has taken him across four continents, working with some of the drinks industry’s best-known names before establishing the Diverse Flavours business, which is primarily dedicated to taking the spirits & wines of South Africa to an international audience.
Budd entered the duty-free business in 1986 when he joined the Long John International duty-free team, working with a portfolio that included John Long Scotch Whisky, Plymouth Gin, Laphroaig, Tormore and Black Bottle.
Budd is not sure that his first Cannes followed in that year or in 1987 – the precise date may have blurred over four decades, but the impression it made clearly has not.
“I slept aboard the Long John International yacht that year,” he recalls. “I remember it as though it were yesterday and thinking: what a brilliant industry!”
That enthusiasm was to prove enduring. Budd went on to work for James Burrough, Allied Domecq and Pernod Ricard, with a career that saw him live and work in the UK, Canada, Japan, Korea and South Africa.
It was those experiences that ultimately led Budd and his wife Michiko to establish Diverse Flavours. Today based in Cape Town, the company was founded with an ambition to introduce the quality and diversity of South African spirits & wine to the world – and, in particular, to build enduring South African brands within duty free and travel retail.
The result is a portfolio that stretches across many of South Africa’s celebrated wine-growing regions, from Stellenbosch and Paarl to Cederberg, Constantia and Swartland.
Diverse Flavours today represents producers including Avondale, Cederberg, Cape Point Vineyards, Delaire Graff, Deetlefs, Ernie Els, Ghost Corner, Groot Constantia, Napier, Survivor, Stellenzicht and Neil Ellis, and works with leading travel retailers and airlines.
Alongside those established names, Budd and the Diverse Flavours team have also created wine brands specifically suited to the travel retail opportunity. 88 Vineyards and the 29 Made For ranges have both carved out niches in the duty-free channel and become strong sellers for the company.
Wine, however, is only part of the story heading to Cannes.
After what Budd cheerfully describes as “many years of procrastination”, Diverse Flavours has launched Cape Diversity Gin, a limited-batch, handcrafted gin inspired by the Cape Floral Kingdom.
The spirit has been created to capture not only the essence of gin but the distinctive character and natural environment of the Cape in which it is distilled.
There is also a distinctly Japanese strand to the Diverse Flavours story. Reflecting Budd and Michiko’s connection with Japan, the company is developing a portfolio of premium Japanese sake for travel retail, including Sakuramasamune from Kobe, Kinshimasamune from Kyoto and Koshitsukano from Niigata.
Many of these brands will be showcased at the TFWA World Exhibition, where Diverse Flavours will exhibit on Stand K55, Green Village.
But for Budd, Cannes this year will clearly be about more than presenting products. Four decades after that memorable first visit, it is also a chance to celebrate the friendships, brands, countries and experiences that have shaped a career in an industry that captured his imagination from the start.
“To celebrate my 40 years in the industry, we hope many friends old and new will come and enjoy a glass or two of outstanding South African wine, Cape Diversity Gin or Japanese sake,” he says.
Today, Budd is still happily filling his duty-free contact book. And with an open invitation to old friends and new acquaintances to join him for a glass on the Diverse Flavours stand, it seems an entirely fitting way to celebrate 40 years in an industry he still clearly relishes. ✈
