CL World Brands has an­nounced the sale of its Thomas Hine and Com­pa­ny Co­gnac house to EDV SAS.The com­pa­ny, which fol­lowed the sale of Burn Stew­art Dis­tillers to Dis­tell in April with the an­nounce­ment that it was look­ing to of­fload Hine, con­firmed the move on Thurs­day. EDV SAS is a French com­pa­ny that is con­trolled by the de­scen­dants of the fam­i­ly be­hind wine trad­er and dis­trib­u­tor �tab­lisse­ments Nico­las.

The val­ue of the trans­ac­tion, which was con­clud­ed ear­li­er this month, has not been dis­closed, but lo­cal re­ports es­ti­mate it at be­tween �40 mil­lion (US$53.5 mil­lion) and �60 mil­lion.In a state­ment, EDV SAS said: "Our strat­e­gy is to pur­sue the de­vel­op­ment and out­reach of the Hine brand, in pre­serv­ing its ex­clu­sive po­si­tion­ing on the mar­ket and the ex­cep­tion­al qual­i­ty of its prod­ucts, as well as in per­pet­u­at­ing the tra­di­tion­al val­ues of its found­ing fam­i­ly."

Found­ed in 1763, Hine is the on­ly Co­gnac mak­er to pos­sess a UK Roy­al War­rant and last year re­port­ed a turnover of �14 mil­lion.Hine Co­gnac was put up for sale in April by its UK-based own­ers CL World Brands.Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Hine Co­gnac Fran­cois Le Grelle at the time con­firmed the move, but said he was un­able to re­veal any fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.Le Grelle said he had yet to meet with any po­ten­tial buy­ers.

Al­so in April, it was re­port­ed that Hine's own­er, CL World Brands, sold its Scotch whisky arm Burn Stew­art Dis­tillers to South African drinks gi­ant Dis­tell for �16 mil­lion.Mar­lon Hold­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CL World Brands, said he was con­fi­dent Dis­tell would take Burn Stew­art to the next lev­el of its in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.In Sep­tem­ber 2012, CL World Brands sold a ma­jor­i­ty stake in Ap­ple­ton Es­tate rum's par­ent com­pa­ny Las­celles De­Mer­ca­do to Ital­ian drinks com­pa­ny Grup­po Cam­pari.

In 2009, Strug­gling Caribbean com­pa­ny CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd came un­der the man­age­ment of the T&T Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing a bil­lion-dol­lar bailout.Found­ed in 1763, Hine spe­cialis­es in vin­tage Co­gnacs, which are re­leased in very lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties af­ter a min­i­mum of 20 years of age­ing.In 1962, Hine was grant­ed a roy­al war­rant from Queen Eliz­a­beth II, as sup­pli­ers of Co­gnac. It is still the on­ly Co­gnac house to this day to hold the ho­n­our.The house is cel­e­brat­ing 250th an­niver­sary this year.

(just-drinks.com/thedrinks­busi­ness.com)