My 2010 Vintage Wine

For those people that don’t know my story, I completed my wine making education at U.C. Davis in 2008 and began making wine in 2009.  My second vintage arrived last week after much drama.  Like many small wineries, I have used a custom crush facility; it doesn’t make sense to own all of the processing equipment for small scale boutique wines.  My first wine is outstanding.  My grapes for both 2009 & 2010 are from Beckstoffer Georges III vineyard and I have compared my wine to the 2009 Schrader Cellars "GIII - Beckstoffer Georges III Vineyard" Cabernet Sauvignon, Rutherford.  You can find tasting notes on Schrader at the major wine rating publications.  My 2010 isn’t as good, though it is still a nice wine.  But the wine does have a more interesting story.

Shortly before the wine was planned to be bottled, I was informed that the custom crush facility had major financial problems and the future of everyone’s wine stored there was in doubt.  Despite that the wine had been 100% paid for in advance, California will not give the wineries title unless they have a license to bottle.  Over the course of the next several weeks, through limited communications and ominous news articles printed in Northern California publications, we learned that the custom crush company housed at Sebastiani, was assigned by the Board of Directors to a third party. The secured lender and assignee arranged for a rush auction, where a prearranged company created by a small private equity firm, was the only bidder for the assets.  This is a legal practice in California and allows companies to avoid lengthy and expensive bankruptcy procedures.  However, small businesses like all of the affected wineries get hurt.  It was rumored that some Mondovi family and others were interested in buying the business, but were shut out of the process.  We were told our wine could be sold in bulk to other wineries.  Some of the employees of the illiquid company became management of the new venture.  They told us how irresponsible the old company was, but that we should trust them.  My winery, and many others, became unsecured creditors attempting to get our wine back.

When the new venture proposed a solution, they set-up conference calls for small groups of wineries to participate.  The new venture owner told us that if we pay a fee of 20-50% of what was previously paid, and pay in advance, they will bottle our wine and let us have it.  Some of the winery owners thanked this guy for “saving” the wine.  They called him a hero and the owner acted like he believed the praise.  I fully understood the process was simply an opportunistic collaboration that followed a financial meltdown, in a state with poor protection for creditors.  No hard feelings from me, but I won’t call these guys heroes.

Now I have my wine, and I paid a premium-monetary and emotional.  The wine has a story that I can tell as I share and distribute it.