Powell recalls the $92,000 Danish strip club incident with a chuckle.
"That is actually true, that’s quite funny … that’s because I was pissed and got given a bill, I buggered up the exchange rate and didn’t have my glasses on.
“Got a nasty f–cking shock the next day when I realised what I’d done. And I rang Mr Kight and (chairman Colin) Ryan the next day and said … you’ll have to put this one on my tab.”
Seriously? He expects us to believe that he made a mistake on the exchange rate, so instead of ringing them up the next day to correct, he just tells the company to pay it? It’s all getting pretty clear, and it does not put Powell in a good light at all.
A lunch where a $15k bottle of wine was purchased and consumed still qualifies the lunch as a “$15k meal”. A “meal” is both food and drink, not just food.
The article also mentions a $20k dinner, and does not specify how said $20k was further subdivided into the constituent parts of the meal.
Powell didn’t say, “My opportunity to re-acquire some of my lost equity in Torbreck at the end of the five-year period was gone.”
He said, “…my equity was gone.”
So either
He’s delusional [to one extent or another, where not knowing what the word “equity” means counts as a delusion], or
He’s lying, or
He had equity in Torbreck for the five years from 2008 to 2013, but due to the mystery clause in the contract, he lost all of that equity on July 27th of this year.
And if 3) is the case - if Powell still had equity in Torbreck from 2008 to 2013 - then Kight’s assertion that he “acquired Torbreck in 2008” reads like what a sociopath would say.
I.e. to a sociopath, “In 2008, I laid a trap for Dave Powell, and Powell walked right into that trap, and he swallowed the bait, hook line and sinker, and I thereby sealed what I knew would become Powell’s fate in 2013, and, from that point on, it was just a matter of waiting patiently for July 27, 2013 to arrive,” would be thought of as, “I acquired Torbreck in 2008.”
Nathan, I’m guessing you know more about kight than is in these few pages. But without the rest of us knowing why he might have an antisocial personality disorder, I’m having a hard time following you.
This all reads to me as Powell being irresponsible and unwilling to face reality. Until it finally caught up with him. I doubt that he’s intentionally lying, but rather that he has made a lot of incorrect asumptions about the way things really are and actually believed in his self-spun pseudo-reality until circumstances forced him to face the real reality. Not delusional, just given enough slack since 2008 to keep fooling himself until the slack finally ran out.
Kight didn’t exactly hew to the corporate line, making a fair number of statements about Powell’s shortcomings, but he comes across as responsible and restrained given some of the facts. I’m not ITB, but lunch bills including $15,000 bottles of wine, and hotel bills and strip club tabs in the tens of thousands sound wildly excessive to me. Anyone here ITB willing to stand up and say they are typical or reasonable? If so, I’ll retract that.
This could end badly for both sides, but there’s a reasonable chance IMO that Powell will end up making great wines (and hopefully some money) again. He is a great talent. And that Torbreck will be able to continue to source quality grapes and produce top quality wines. But neither is likely ever to be the same.
In the article, Powell says: “he meant to have the contract rewritten…” - now, obviously, he cannot do that whatever he “meant to do” - a contract is a bond, it’s not meant to be “rewritten”. That’s just kidding youself!
As for whether the Laird 2009 is saleable or not, I doubt many people will believe Powell on his word - once they try the wine, it will be clear whether that’s true or not. If it isn’t, that’s a very dangerous, potentially “slanderous”, gamble on his part…
Well, some of the big boy distributors for sure spend more money than that at VinItaly every year, opening large format Gaja, Dom, Dal Forno and other such at hyper inflated prices at Bodega dei Vini and strippers / hookers are probably not out of the question both there and in Vegas.
Roberto, pure speculation on my part, but I assume VinItaly is a much bigger event than the ones mentioned above. And the marketing budget for a “big boy distributor” would presumably be much larger than that for a single winery the size of Torbreck.
Whether Kight is a sociopath, heartless or otherwise, he also sounds like a businessman. And frankly, all due respect to Mr. Powell, he sounds a lot less than professional.
For example, he justifies spending $15,000 on a bottle of wine at a business lunch based on using it to close a $300,000 sale. Revenue is fairly meaningless. What margins does he operate on? If his margin is 15% then he cleared $45,000 on the alleged transaction, but then he chose to filter 1/3 of that through his (and his client’s) kidneys in one hour. I wish I had the balls to conduct business like that, but for me a cup of coffee at $3 does the job a bit better. Your and his mileage might vary.
Look, I don’t know Powell from Kight from Pope Francis.
But I read what Powell wrote.
And I read what Kight had to say in the Wine Business Magazine interview.
Powell is writing from the point of view of someone who had EQUITY [meaning an ownership stake] in Torbreck from 2008 right up until July 27, 2013, when suddenly he lost everything.
[Or at least writing from the point of view of someone who THOUGHT that he still had equity - where the thoughts which he was thinking may or may not have been delusional.]
Kight is speaking from the point of view of someone who purchased 100% of Torbreck in 2008 and who views Powell as having been nothing more than a mere employee of Torbreck for the five years since then.
The two points of view [and the rather starkly, emphatically unequivocal language with which each point of view is being presented] are completely incompatible one another.