A Fine Wine Company Game Changer

Over time, the winners in the fine wine space understand it’s a long-term endeavor.  It requires the alignment of ownership, vision, resources and patience.  When one or more of these becomes too far out of alignment, significant change often follows.  In this example, the fine wine company was a varietal category leader with over a century of family ownership.  While many other changes in leadership had been contemplated, they were ready to pass stewardship of the company into the right hands. 

As a co-leader in the acquiring company, a member of Azur had helped develop a mindful strategy to focus only on specific opportunities.  Included in the potential opportunities was the category leading wine company noted above.  From the very first meeting in the home of the owner, it was clear the opportunity was aligned and that as an acquiror, we would meet the hurdle as an appropriate steward. 

The transaction was transformative for the acquiring company.  It provided significant expansion of the domestic wholesale platform, brand new access to an export platform and the ability to improve farming and winemaking, including a multimillion-dollar expansion of the winemaking facility further upgrade quality.  The combination resulted in not only nearly doubling the business, but significantly improved fruit quality, winemaking and the best wine scores in the history of the over century old family wine company.