CBI is Constellation, and SMWE is Ste Michelle.
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Schrader?
Booker?
Empathy?
All bought because of their DTC model.
Lest we forget the $600 million combined they sunk into Meiomi and Prisoner.
They technically only own 2 beer companies.
Investment, sure, you need to look at them as publicly traded and what % of their business is the wine/spirits arm. They could sell it all off for a profit and just be done with it, it’s such a small % of the total.
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I guess I’m happy for Dan, but this is a real loss. That being said, I agree with the comment about about NFTs in that it appears he likes to move in a lot of different directions.
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Dan is not just a winemaker. Follow the Massican IG and you will see all sorts of stuff.
The NFT was never some high dollar thing. Yeah it was NFT, but more like a thread drift than anything meaningful.
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It would be interesting to do a tasting of geek brands that got bought up by conglomerates, see how they have changed, not changed, gotten better or worse.
I kind of doubt anyone would actually put one together, most of us just write them off when they get sold. But in theory it would be interesting.
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I’m not suggesting that the quality will go down, but I like supporting family-owned wines, so having Massican be a part of Gallo negatively impacts my desire to buy the wine. That being said, many of his wines are so unique in California, I will likely continue to buy those.
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I pushed back on the NFT comments because I suspect that Dan’s use of them as well as his active exploration of new ways to market could be a substantive reason why Gallo was interested.
When we chatted, we specifically talked on how NFT (as an example) were a gateway to bring in new people to wine, especially higher end less well-know varieties which are a hard sell. There is effectively zero overlap between wine geeks (the only people interested in Napa Tocai/Ribolla) and crypto people. Wholly new customers versus attempting to add-on to existing wine buyer’s habits. These projects are a chance to bring in new and younger customers - something needed to grow and prosper.
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Isn’t Gallo family owned?
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Fine, as longer as it outweighs displaced customers
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Nobody had to buy the NFT stuff.
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In terms of brands and production, wine is a huge piece of what they do. Heck, you can’t watch Food Network without seeing a Kim Crawford AND Meiomi commercial. I would say they are a bit more invested in it than one might think.
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I would argue don’t knock it until you try it.
Dan is staying on board, and based on our text convo today, he is very excited about the future.
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Finally got to read the article, and it sounds like he sold more because the workload/logistics was too much.
He’s been trying to grow the brand, and eventually growth outstrips the capacity of two hands to manage it.
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Constellation late to the Fed-Ex dtc shipping rates news 