I agree with you Tran. I feel for Powell but it sounded like he made a lot of bad financial decisions over the years and it finally bit him in a big way. Kight sounds pretty cold-blooded but in the end it was a business decisions. That’s how rich people seem to get rich and stay rich.
Patricia willingly invited Trump to rescue her brand as she was selling off other parts of the Kluge fortune she had inherited to pay off various debts. She stood right by his side and praised him as they made a public ceremony of transferring the name. Trump is just now supplanting her name and images on the labels and the ‘brand’ changes to newer vintages.
It is no secret that I would confront Dave when I thought his behaviour was not in keeping with Torbreck’s image and our professional standards, but it also was certainly no surprise to me that this would occasionally happen. Dave is Dave, with a bigger than life personality that sometimes gets the better of him.
Dave was aware that I thought Torbreck has grown beyond his leadership.”
I wish Dave would not react so emotionally and sit down to seriously consider our offer
It is easy to get angry at Dave because he acts so emotionally, without mature thought at times… but that same simplicity of emotion makes you want to protect him.
I can’t tell you how many times my wife looked at me like I was crazy because I’d agreed to help Dave out of some fix he’d gotten himself into.
Kight was a lot less guarded than I would be when discussing a former employee. If these statements are part of a scripted response, Kight needs a new script writer.
I would have said “I have the utmost respect for Dave, but we decided to make a change in that position.” Follow up questions about that get different versions of “I have too much respect for Dave to discuss the details in public”. Questions referencing Powell’s email or other public statements get a version of “I understand that Dave is upset, but every decision we make is focused on the best interest of the winery”. The furthest I might go is “As you know, there are always two sides to the story”
Did Powell not willingly invite Kight to rescue his company?
There wasn’t any hostile takeover after the fact, as this seems to be. Once Trump came on Patricia had no real involvement.
Pretty sure the only person who views this as hostile is Dave Powell.
Dave Powell brought this team in to buy Torbreck. He threw himself to the curb by not accepting their new offer. Happens all.the.time.
Fair enough. The pretense of why Kight and Trump were brought in were similar, but the way things transpired afterwards is different. The way I’m seeing the Torbreck situation is that Powell, as brand creator AND winemaker, was not interested in stepping aside until forced to do so. Kluge stepped aside willingly.
Agree. Condescending, passive aggressive, patronizing, disingenuous, counterproductive, and irrelevant. Also insulting to the reader, it assumes that we’re too dumb to see he’s trying to smear Powell’s character so we’ll believe him more than Powell. Shows he doesn’t have any concern for Powell as a person at all.
However, I now have no clue as to what happened financially with Torbreck. But I also now know with whom I’d rather share my magnum of Les Amis.
It reads as though it were written by a sociopath.
Which is not to say that Dave Powell is necessarily an angel - I don’t know Powell from Adam.
But speaking of Adam, if that Kight fellow were to offer me a bite of an apple, then I’d fully expect it to get lodged in my throat.
Permanently.
sounds like the same thing David did in his blurb?
Another article which gives some balance.
Yoyu’re right if you believe Powell was pretending to be more innocent and shocked than he really was, and is playing the victim. Having met the big bear of a guy, I tend to believe he really was shocked, either that naive or that uninterested in anything having to do with the business end of the winery. “Sure I’ll sign this. Can I go make some wine now?”
"It was flashed all over the news. But he has no money,’’ Kight said.
"The amount of money he would have had to raise in the sale, to pay me off, to buy Lindsay Park, to have the money to develop Lindsay Park, I said "Dave you’ve just created such a high hurdle’’ it’s a bad idea.’’
Powell yesterday told The Advertiser he was not planning to sell Torbreck, but was organising a joint venture with serious overseas interests, and would have had money left over to buy Lindsay Park.
"I was doing a joint venture deal with a huge international company which would have given Torbreck extra access to markets and money and stuff to make more wine and with some of the return I was going to buy Lindsay Park.
"This deal I was doing was worth a fortune. Mr Kight was furious that he wasn’t getting a share of it.’’
One of them is just plain lying.
Seriously, you think the guy was that naive? We’re talking millions upon millions of dollars, and I doubt he was making this decision in a vacuum without input from lawyers or other advisers.
Now that is an expensive lap dance!
I’ve got a heck of a lot less sympathy for Powell after reading that article. How many other winemakers would agree you need to expense $15k meals on a regular basis to make sales? $25k on three nights at a hotel? Sickening.
not $15k meals. A $15k bottle of wine is what he said. His own quote.
If his client was delusional, then, as an officer of the court, he was PROFESSIONALLY OBLIGATED to have his client committed.
Those two statements are mutually incompatible with one another.
One or both of them are delusional, or one or both of them are lying, or there’s some Catty-Cornered permutation of the two [one a liar and one delusional, both liars and both delusional, etc etc etc].
Not truly mutually exclusive. He acquired the winery in 08 subject to having Powell paying him back in five years, wherein Powell would re-acquire the winery.
And $25,000 for three nights accommodation? That’s my neighborhood in Hong Kong and this is nothing short of outrageous unless you are a Taipan or visiting rockstar!