Burgundy's Domaine Faiveley Buys Sonoma’s Williams Selyem.
Seems like a great caretaker for WS, but also another foreign investment as I am sure land/property in Sonoma looks much more accessible than in Burgundy.
Discuss.
Faiveley has a style that could translate well to the new world so this will be interesting. The first person who can produce something that feels and tastes like a top-level Burgundy wine on Oregon or California soil could make a lot of $$$. But many have tried - I don’t think the Oregon Drouhin totally matches the Burgundy Drouhin and the market doesn’t seem to either. (Or is it all branding?).
It was @Joe_Davis of Arcadian and the winery closed down went through bankruptcy.
But I think he was ahead of his time. If someone started today making wines like he did, and cultivated the proper buzz around it, it might be big.
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I wonder if WS will roll up into the Wilson Daniels portfolio. When they took over distribution rights for Faiveley I recall prices jumping substantially (The Mercurey’s wholesale was the old Retail in GA on the current vintage), curious if that happens with WS as well.
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Good question. Though WS has already been on the aggressive side for a long time with pushing their prices up at least to market value. I’m not sure how much more they could hike it up now.
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I think its not just branding- the Domaine Drouhin wines of Oregon generally seem “more bigger” in a riper new world style than the Joseph Drouhin Burgundies I’ve tried, which generally lean more into the acid and stiffer tannins.
There are many variables of course, but that has been my impression and I’ve got a lot of both in my cellar. Oregon vintages since 2014 have been mostly hot and long and thats contributing to big-fruited, 14% Alc wines more often out there for many producers.
I’ve had a few overly-generous glasses from Drouhin’s Burgs as well, but they seemed more like the exception. (Talkin’ to you, 2019 Chambolle 1er weighing at a sumo-sized 14.5% Alc…).
I feel like I taste more vintage and hopefully site/terroir differences in Drouhin’s Burgs (mind you, they have a lot of sites to work with). In contrast, the Drouhin Oregon Laurene/Louise reds are from same Dundee hillside site and mostly taste like “good-but-big OR Pinot” each year to me. They are better and distinct from the distant, valley floor Roserock imho.
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I was priced out long ago relative to what I am willing to spend for Sonoma Pinot, but certainly curious.
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Enormous news!
Exciting news too. They have done a great job with Billaud Simon.
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Big news, and also somewhat unsurprising given that they had already acquired a stake at the beginning of 2021: Williams Selyem Owners Sell Stake in Winery to Burgundy's Faiveley Family
Looks like they are going to stay the course with winemaking and style.
I haven’t had too much of either, but was really impressed at how good Kelley Fox and Antica Terra was when I visited a few weeks ago. Goodfellow too.
I wonder at some point if we would have a master thread for smaller or family-owned type wineries (of the type we care about on WB, that is) that were acquired by a conglomerate or other larger entity, and how the wines and pricing did or didn’t change as a result.
I guess a subset of that question would be after the original owner and/or winemaker left. Often they stay on for a few years under the new ownership.
Like how has Schrader changed? How has Copain? How has Siduri? Colgin? Sanford?
[There are important Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy houses owned by conglomerates, but I don’t know enough off hand about who owned them before and whether the acquisition was similar in substance to the question I’m asking. Probably in some cases and not in others.]
I don’t mean every time ownership of a winery changes hands, but more when the original owner sells to a large company that owns lots of wine and/or spirits brands. That’s not always cleanly delineated, and so the concept is highly susceptible to being internet henpecked to death, but it’s something I wonder about.
My gut says that we WBer types tend to move on from wineries quickly after this happens, yet I’m not really sure whether we should have or not, at least in terms of wine quality and pricing and all (I know some people do it because they had a personal or emotional connection to the owners and aren’t interested when someone else buys the winery).
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It may come down. When we carried WS in Washington the only option was to pay mailing list price then add margin…there was no wholesale FOB. That is if they aren’t selling out every vintage and every wine…or maybe they pick a couple items for wholesale tier to target restaurants, that’s what I would do.
I spoke to John sometime in the last 2 years, and he led me to believe that they are fully selling through, and that the little wine that goes through wholesale is being bought. Whether or not that is selling through at the wholesale level is something else entirely that I did not know.
Its resale value at auction is upside down though.
Wasn’t that the whole Rhys thesis? (Serious question)
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Yes, I think so at least to some extent, and it really caught fire for awhile.
A properly aged Rhys SVD can definitely trip up some Burg devotees in a blind tasting. Arcadian even more.
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Agreed that this is significant. In terms of Berserker reaction (or lack thereof) to this buy - seems like it could be pretty different from many of the producer sales in California. Faiveley isn’t a conglomerate roll-up or private equity play - it’s a family business that has a good or better reputation for quality. And W-S isn’t Williams or Selyem any more. They sold to the Dyson family in 1998 and one could argue whether the wines have been better or worse over the last 25 years. Certainly the Dyson family has leaned heavily into the brand and expanded significantly. So, is this better or worse? I haven’t had much of the W-S wines over the last decade so have no horse in this race, but overall it seems likely to be at worst neutral, and very likely a strong positive for the long term given the Faiveley family’s track record in France.
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It somewhat highlights two possible theses of traditional winemakers from the old world doing a new world venture:
(1) Make wines which are going to closely resemble their old world wines.
(2) Make wines that reflect the terroir of the new world site, even if that is different and riper/fuller than what they make in the home country.
It’s also possible (2) is all or partly a “make wines that sell well in the US” concept too.