Renwood Purchased...

WINE TALK
1

According to MikeDunne in today’s SacBee:
Dunne:RenwoodSold

Purchased by Ren Acquistions. According to Mike:
Ren Acquisition is a privately held company chaired by Alejandro Pedro Bulgheroni, an Argentine whose wealth up to now has relied largely on oil and gas exploitation.

At one time, ScottHarvey was looking at buying it from bankruptcy.
I don’t expect anything good to come of this.
Tom

2

Thanks for the news and the link, Tom. I haven’t visited Renwood in many years, for a variety of reasons. It would have been nice if Scott Harvey could have bought it (or Kent Rosenblum, as was rumored not too long ago).

3

The Scott Harvey wines from Renwood in the early to mid 90’s were very nice. C’est la vie.

Tom

4

I think I may have a bottle or two of Santino from the late70’s somewhere.

5

Rob Smerling is a Boston guy and I loved supporting his wines in the 90’s but many things went south for him and the winery once they teamed up with Deutsch and it’s unfortunate for all parties though I have no direct knowledge of the relationship. I hope things get turned around, as long as they still have those old vines vineyards there is plenty of potential for future wines. Most of the problems they had were with moving the volume of the low end ‘Sierra Series’ wines once Deutsch came into the equation.

6

Hmmmmm…not sure which vnyds those would be, Brent. They have a GrandPere (TradeMark do-hickey here) vnyd that they planted w/ cuttings taken from the original/ancient/true
GrandPere vnyd across SteinerRd there. But it’s only 10-15 yrs old I believe. They trademarked the GrandPere name, but the wine that comes w/ the GrandPere (TradeMark do-hickey here)
name on the label is not really old vine. That contract w/ Terry expired quite a few yrs ago. I think most of their grapes are purchased but it was never (to my knowledge) identified
what vnyds they were using.
Tom

7

There’s an old name I haven’t thought about in a while. Have any Gemello to go along with them?

8

There’s an old name I haven’t thought about in a while. Have any Gemello to go along with them?

No, unfortunately. I do have a few old odds and ends like Hoffman Mountain Ranch, Estrella River, Schoolhouse, Ventana, Lytton Springs, Chateau Chevalier around. I guess I need to have a cull party.

9

Tom,
I really have no recollection of what exactly Renwood’s structure was but I thought they made at least 4 old vines bottlings in their heyday… GrandPere, I thought that there was a GrandMere, and 2 other SVD wines I can’t recall. I guess all of the grapes were contracted.

10

Renwood did produce a couple of vineyard designated Zins in the 90’s along with the original Grandpere they produced a D’Agostini Brothers (though not related to the Sabon Estate/Shenandoah Vineyard folks) and a Jack Rabbit Flat from Fox Creek Vineyard (looks like it still is produced per the web site). Not sure on the age of the vineyards after all “Old Vine” has no legal meaning as far as I know.

11

This is the one I was thinking - Fox Creek averages 80 years old and is or has been a source for Jack Rabbit Flat, although since JRF isn’t SVD I imagine they can use grapes from wherever they want.

I recently had the '08 JRF from the BevMo $0.05 sale. It was a decent pair of bottles for $16.50 each, but not at all on par with other zins in the $33 range which was the normal retail for that bottle.

12

Sean,
The D’Agostini (no Bros) is owned by Lee/Shirley Sobon and, I believe, the source of the Renwood version.
Tom

13

Tom, I visited the winery tasting room at the time when that botteling came out and was told by the staff it was not from the same vineyards as the old D’Agostini winery which the Sobon’s had purchased some years earlier and renamed Sobon Estate (as I’m sure you know with your amazing knowledge of CA wine making). Maybe the staff mis-informed me, didn’t know or just denied connection [scratch.gif] I had liked what Scott Havey was doing with the Santino wines and was quite saddend when the winery was sold but thought the early Renwood wines were pretty good. The winery took on a weird vibe after a few years later, quality seemed to slip and I haven’t been back in over a decade so a rather long winded story but that is what I was told at the time.

14

Sean,
That could be, but I’d be surprised. Originally, Scott bought grapes off that D’Agostini vnyd where the old d’Agostini Bros. wnry was located.
Then LeeSobon bought the property and I’m pretty sure that Lee continued to sell those grapes to Scott. But after Scott left…??? Smerling was so widely reviled
by the folks up there in ShenandoahVlly, that I’d be surprised that Lee continued to sell to him, unless he had a long-term contract that forced him to.
Yet…I’ve not heard of any other vnyd up there in ShenandoahVlly that was identified as a d’Agostini vnyd. Smerling was not always the most ethical of
people, so maybe there was something else going on that made him feel he could use that name.
Mystery to me.
Tom

15

More on Renwood’s new ownership from Mike Dunne today:
Ambitious New Renwood Hatched

The article mentions that Kent Rosenblum is a consultant on the new venture. Dunne writes that Renwood is trying “to restyle the winery and to reposition it as the most fashionable, sophisticated and dear zinfandel specialist in the country.”

16

Interesting…thanks for the link, Ken.
Originally, they had JeffCohn as consultant. Interesting that he’s been dropped in favor of Kent.
The proof’ll be in the puddin’. He’s certainly throwing a lot of $$'s at Renwood. My gut feeling is it’s a lot of smoke & mirrors,
but time will tell.
I suspect that, 5 yrs down the road, Tegan will have a bigger impact on the ShenandoahVlly. But my mind is open
and I’m all for their success.
Tom

17

Background for those interested.

18

Wow! This is a walk down memory lane. I remember tasting their 1983 (1985?) syrah blindly among a bunch of Northern Rhones and Claude Kolm and I guessed it was the Guigal Cote Rotie. At $5 a bottle or something, I picked up a bunch. They didn’t develop like Cote Rotie, but who could quarrel at the price and the quality in its early years. Wish I had a bottle now.

19

Thanks for that article Glenn.

20

Thanks for the link, Glenn. An interesting (re-) read for me. Particularly liked the quote of Smerling:

"Everybody in AmadorCnty deals with me…I’m the man. I put the place on the map"

Whatta meglo-maniac.

Tom