Interesting article by Eric today in the NYTimes:
Asimov: Overshine Cooperative
on the Overshine cooperative set up by some of my favorite winemakers.
It’s not clear from the article how the cooperative actually works, the nuts & bolts of it, but it sounds like a good idea to me to insure growth of the individual brands.
Tom
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Archive link: https://archive.ph/JffkD
I posted a comment in the NYT, talking about the Estezargues Cooperative in the southern Rhone. This apparently functions in a similar fashion and has been around for decades.
Here is my comment:
This is a terrific model that has worked well in France for decades.
The Cooperative winery in Estezargues is organized on a very similar pattern. Half a dozen vineyard owners pooled resources to build an up-to-date winery facility and employ a team of talented winemakers. Instead of the typical Cooperative structure of “everything in one big vat”, all of the individual member’s wines were made separately and bottled under their own Domaine names.
Many of these have gotten good press and are sold successfully in the U.S. Among them are Domaines d’Andezon, La Montagnette, Genestas and Pierredon.
I used to import Domaine de la Montagnette.
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This sounds like someone has purchased these labels and is combinging them into a ‘cooperative’ of some sort. Each producer is retaining some equity stake but it’s not clear how much.
The guy purchasing them already had a few brands and a vineyard - and was the former top attorney for Google appartently.
More to follow for sure
From what I read, the original individual brand owners continue to make their own wines… I hope so!
Good wine!
Mr. Drummond, a former chief legal officer for Alphabet, the parent company of Google, will be the founding partner and primary investor in what is now called the Overshine Collective.
“Artisans being absorbed by a conglomerate, that takes away the magic,” he said. “What about more of a partnership and collective, with the benefits of scale, collaboration and what that means for costs? What you want is for folks to continue to be entrepreneurial while maintaining the individual integrity of the brands, which makes them what they are.”
A little bit of irony here - despise that which made you rich? Not withstanding that - I have been on both sides of it and prefer the excitement of building things - the entrepreneurial aspect is fun but doesn’t quite have the financial security of being a chief legal officer for a FAB 7 company. One other thought about making a small fortune producing wine - start with a large fortune.
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