Ok. I should have said “unhappy about the possibility of someone ripping up . . .” As I said, I have met some of the Seghesio family and I bought a lot of their small production wines in mid 90s. When I asked the marketing director, a Seghesio cousin, why they made the crappy Sonoma Zin bottling when they made so much other good low volume wine and she said “We have to make money somewhere so that we can afford to make wine we like.” However, Mike Officer is the guy who is pushing the idea that old vineyards should be treated like landmark buildings because they can’t be replaced and I know he would do his best to keep the old vines. Seghesio? I don’t know.
According to published reports, Crimson Wine Group, a public company, owns Seghesio. In late August, PINE RIDGE WINERY, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, doing business as Crimson Wine Group, signed a contract to buy what appears to be the Montafi Vineyard for $2,600,000. Since they are a public company and this is a major contract, it can be viewed on the SEC website here:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1562151/000156215114000026/c151-20140829ex101bf3510.htm
The contract expressly provides, among other things, that they are assuming the contract from 2008 with Carlisle.
There are seven directors of Crimson. None named Seghesio. They are Ian M. Cumming; Joseph S. Steinberg; John D. Cumming; Avraham M. Neikrug; Douglas M. Carlson; Craig D. Williams; and Erle Martin.
From the Crimson 10-K as filed wityh the SEC:
"Seghesio Family Vineyards
Seghesio Family Vineyards owns 299 acres of estate vineyards in two Sonoma County, California appellations, the Alexander Valley and the Russian River Valley, of which approximately 281 acres are planted and producing grapes. Seghesio Family Vineyards has a long history of growing and producing Zinfandel and Italian varietal wines in the Sonoma region of California. The winery and production facilities at Seghesio Family Vineyards have a permitted annual wine production capacity of up to 404,000 gallons which equates to approximately 170,000 cases of wine. The facility includes areas and equipment for traditional crush, fermentation, aging, bottling and warehousing processes, as well as a tasting room, private hospitality areas and administrative offices. There are indoor and outdoor special event dining areas. In Alexander Valley, Seghesio Family Vineyards also owns a historic non-operating winery, mansion and railroad depot, which Crimson intends to convert into educational, tasting, hospitality and potentially incremental production facilities.
Seghesio Family Vineyards is focused on producing estate grown Zinfandel and Italian varietal wines as well as a Sonoma County Zinfandel produced from both purchased and estate grown grapes. The wines are sold by Crimson under the Seghesio Family Vineyards brand name."
AND NOW, just to scare y’all a bit . . . Also from the Crimson 10-K, “Newly planted vines take approximately four to five years to reach maturity and vineyards can be expected to have a useful life of 25 years before replanting is necessary. Depending on the site, soil and water conditions and spacing, Crimson’s experience has been that it costs approximately $30,000 to $65,000 per acre over a three to four year period to develop open land into a producing premium wine grape vineyard, before taking into account the cost of the land. With over 700 acres of planted estate holdings, Crimson could have annual capital investment requirements of over $1,000,000 to replace existing vineyard sites as their economic useful life expire”
In case you forgot, the Montafi vines used in the Carlisle Zin are supposed to be already more than 25 years old.
Have fun. Time to get back to work.
So, I’ve got some relation to the Crimson Wine Group, since my wife is the wine club manager at Archery Summit Winery, which is another Crimson Wine Group property. When CWG purchased Seghesio, it was with the agreement that the Seghesios that wanted to stay involved would (including Ted, who is the winemaker). As far as I can tell, Seghesio hasn’t been changed from a winemaking standpoint since being purchased by CWG, with the major changes being in operations and production and sales logistics (thing like who their distributor is, to align with other CWG properties).
I would HIGHLY doubt that CWG would rip out an old vine Zin vineyard to plant something else (like Pinot Noir). They don’t have a winery that does Pinot Noir in Sonoma, and I doubt they are looking to add one to the portfolio, when they have a Pinot winery in San Luis Obispo (Chamisal Vineyards) and the Willamette Valley (Archery Summit). The only CWG winery in the Sonoma valley is Seghesio, so it would only make sense to keep that vineyard as a Zin vineyard.
Thanks John.
While I don’t think I would have personally welcomed any news that Montafi was sold, being sold to Seghesio is probably the “least bad” this news could have been. Is the future of the vineyard more, or less certain since the sale? None of us know, but any knowledge we thought we had before was an illusion anyway.
At least we do know that Seghesio hasn’t been ripping out their other old-vine holdings since CWG took over, and that they have some involvement in HVS, hosting a dinner as well as a tour of Chianti Station.
What does make me worry? $2.6M! ![[shock.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0b1dcf699ec319f43254f92e3f145786dcd93904.gif "shock"){kind=small}
That’s a lot of zinfandel to sell. I can’t imagine what the business case looks like for that, but if you can sell out Montafi at ~$45/bottle from estate grapes, then maybe it’s about 7-10 years to break even.
That sounds 100 times more likely than the “buying Montafi to rip it up and plant pinot” concerns, just from where I sit.
I don’t know if Mike Officer is at liberty to comment on how this sale affects Carlisle, but if he is, it would be interesting to hear.
At least according to CT, there are no SVD bottlings of Montafi Ranch until a winery called Starry Night made a 2005 and then Carlisle started in 2006. I guess it had always just been used in blends before 2005?
That’s because Carlisle called it Tom Feeney. Remember 02-05 being really nice.
It was formerly known as Tom Feeney Ranch and Carlisle was bottling it as such since 2000. When Feeney sold it, he took the name and someone, maybe Mike, changed the name.
I do not expect Mike to comment. He should probably just keep his head down and make good wine while the rest of us pull ideas and speculation out of the air.
I would think it would be advantageous for Seghesio/CWG to continue to sell grapes to Carlisle (and William & Selyem if they still get fruit) as it bolsters the vineyard name when other high profile wineries make great wines from the vineyard.
We just had a 2008. Amazing wine. Very sad to hear about the sale.
Had the 09 a couple of weeks ago and it was fantastic, I will be buying the max in the future. Sad to hear.
bump
I am not stirring up trouble. Yes, when someone says that, they usually are.
I just think it’s a fascinating peek into perceived fragility of old vineyards’ security (with respect to future releases). I have seen many - well, a few - old vine sites come under threat of being ripped up recently.
I don’t know what will happen to the ancient Antioch/Oakley vineyards, nor the remaining RRV Zin plantings, the Mendocino and Santa Clara/San Benito vineyards that are sources of my favorite wines.
The HVS and laws passed in hopes of keeping heritage vineyards in the ground reflect that consumers like me are not alone.
Does anyone have similar concerns and questions about the future of vineyards in California?
Gum Tree is still but just barely. No wines from that site since 2001.
“Pietro” torn up and replanted to something more fashionable.
I too am sad about Montafi but at least it’ll still produce Zinfandel under the new ownership. That said it was sad to chat with the current viticulturalist recently. I won’t be buying Montafi after Carlisle losses the lease.
When you say “viticulturalist”, are you referring to the vineyard manager - like, the fella who is responsible for day-to-day farming on the site?
Drew, yes. Sorry for being coy, but I didn’t want to bring up names.
My main concern is: “What can I do to help keep these venerable fields of grapes around?”
The answer, since I rarely buy more than one or two bottles of a given wine at any time, is, “Nothing.”
Carlisle is my favorite zinfandel producer. Montafi is my favorite Carlisle zinfandel. I’ve no ill-will towards Seghesio, but they don’t drink like Carlisle. I’ll be buying my full allocation of Carlisle Montafi from here on out.
Does anyone know how long Carlisle has a contract on the grapes for the vineyard?
I don’t remember. The vineyard was saved in 2007 from being torn up (unlike Pietro’s). So the 10 year contract could have started in 2007. Let’s hope it was later than that.