No bankruptcy, but it seems various business and personal legal problems led his major investor to restructure things. At least 4 paid employees (rather than just Ray, plus one poor soul in later times) in place to handle harvest and day-to-day business. His legal issues made it look iffy that he’d be able to enter France in time for harvest without being served or arrested. His partner seems to have addressed this by making him redundant. His own statements indicate how he’s moving on to new things, without addressing whether or not he’ll ever have hands-on involvement in the winery again. He may not know for sure.
Some of the wines are quite good, some are mediocre, some are seriously flawed. All pretty normal for Burgundy.
To those of us who bought, the quality isn’t the issue, for the most part*. It’s more how much he shit on his customers with the endless lying and so forth. A lot of the bumbling was understandable. It’s that he lied about it pathologically. Lies that time would predictably expose. Over and over. (There are certainly grand illusion winemakers who lie just as much, and customers happily spend ten plus times what their wines are qualitatively worth, but they are very careful to not bumble, so incur no wrath.)
*A couple wines he sold as futures didn’t turn out well. He delivered those to the purchasers, but did not put the remainder into general distribution. Of course, he said that he loved those wines so much that he was keeping the rest for himself. It’s things like that, and endless stories of inexcusable customer relations.
thanks… so the major investor is now in control … ??? and it sounds like more cash into the business and RW is diluted out … am I close …???
again, thanks…
Salute !!!
We don’t know the details. Just putting pieces together from various factoids, and reading between the lines of Walker brothers’ spin on the changed situation and events that led up to it. Ray claims he was part of these decisions, but that seems doubtful,
It said in Nuits that the people of Maison Ilan or their legal representatives have contacted suppliers, warning them not speak to the journalist inquiring about Mr. Walker’s woes - apparently with discrete but obvious legal threats…
I assume that such actions mean that those representatives no-longer want grape business from those suppliers, hence, 2015 would effectively be the last grapes ‘bought’ by Maison Ilan…
Just day-dreaming out loud, but how awesome would it be if starting in 2016, M I became named after the main investor(s) and gets re-named “Maison Dragon 8”?
Remember, Francois Mauss was sued for referring to Beaujolais as Vin de Merde. He won on appeal as the French courts struggled to understandthis newfangled freedom of expression in the EU.
Absolutely not. If Bill Nanson gets his facts straight, from people with first-hand knowledge who tell him the truth, then no one has anything to worry about. Sounds like a classic case of intimidation trying to forestall the truth being revealed.
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