Merger analysis 2000 deals done with more to come.

Publication: Wines & Vines

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COPYRIGHT 2001 Hiaring Company

Last year was the year we learned that a 500,000 case winery is too small to make a go of it in California. That's what Harry Parsley, the president and chief executive officer of Buena Vista said when he announced in November that the winery was being put on the market.

Being a great deal smaller might be OK too, but Parsley said that the move toward consolidation in the wine industry was making it difficult for wineries the size of Buena Vista to compete. He said most wineries are either much smaller or much larger, with few in Buena Vista's 500,000-case production range.

By the time you read this, someone may well have stepped forward to snap up the historic Sonoma winery. When the Racke family, the German family that owns the winery, decided to put Buena Vista on the block, there had been rumors for several months that a sale was close.

One bidder was E&J Gallo. Gallo, the world's largest winery, apparently made several successive bids for the property, none of them large enough to meet the Rackes' expectations. The speculation in California is that...

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